A collection of poems that contemplate the bureaucracy of the mind
through interior political cabinets
Taking its name from the banal, purgatorial space outside (but inside) a
doctor's office, Well Waiting Room imagines the conversations we
have with ourselves at this liminal site as an exchange between interior
bureaucrats, each of whom governs a particular aspect of the psyche. The
poems explore the dynamics of this political ministry, which includes
the Cabinets of Desire, Indulgences, Self-Preservation, Ordinary
Affairs, Ambivalence, Confrontations, and many others--there's even a
press secretary, a curator, and a general counsel. Like a cabinet of
curiosity wrapped in red tape, the poems examine the
compartmentalization of the mind and the confounding news of the day.
Formally, the poems range from dramatic monologues to combative sonnets,
quippy memos to voice-y prose blocks, incantatory interludes to
dreamlike visual landscapes. Sometimes, the poems address a purely
internal conflict: Why do we lie to ourselves, indulge in
schadenfreude, repeat the same mistakes? Other times, the poetic lens
points outward like a spear, confronting the external universe: social
injustice, polar ice melt, the Trump administration, and other man-made
disasters. But in both universes, the poems find joy: the first
observation of gravitational waves, the otherworldly beauty of rare
marine species, the discovery that you are your own best way out.
For Schlaifer, the underlying question is an epistemological one, an
ontological one, a theological one. Why are we here, how do we know
things, and why does God--so often--seem to be working against us? In
Schlaifer's bureaucratic vision of the mind, readers will see their own
internal voices affectingly (and often humorously) reflected. The book
traverses unknowable terrain in sturdy boots. It unearths not answers
but better questions for our time.
