Civil Service: Poems

By Claire Schwartz

A study in complicity with crushing state violence and an invitation to a chilling, remarkable debut.

While the spectacle of state violence fleetingly commands a collective gaze, Civil Service turns to the quotidian where political regimes are diffusely maintained—where empire is the province of not a few bad actors, but of all who occupy and operate the state. In these poems populated by characters named for their occupations and mutable positions of power—the Accountant, the Intern, the Board Chair—catastrophic events recede as the demands and rewards of daily life take precedence. As a result, banal authorizations and personal compromises are exposed as the ordinary mechanisms inherent to extraordinary atrocity. Interwoven with bureaucratic encounters are rigorous studies of how knowledge is produced and contested. One sequence imagines an interrogation room in which a captive, Amira, refuses the terms of the state’s questioning. The dominant meanings of that space preclude Amira’s full presence, but those conditions are not fixed. In a series of lectures, traces of that fugitive voice emerge as fragmentary declarations, charging the reader to dwell beside it and transform meaning such that Amira might be addressed.

In this astonishing debut, Claire Schwartz stages the impossibility of articulating freedom in a nation of prisons. Civil Service probes the razor-thin borders between ally and accomplice, surveillance and witness, carcerality and care—the lines we draw to believe ourselves good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781644451823

Book preview

Note to the Reader on Text Size




reddening your cheeks as you slip into the chair drawn just for you. Sit, the chair says

We recommend that you adjust your device settings so that all of the above text fits on one line; this will ensure that the lines match the author’s intent. If you view the text at a larger than optimal type size, some line breaks will be inserted by the device. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a small indent.

CIVIL SERVICE

CIVIL SERVICE

poems

Claire Schwartz

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2022 by Claire Schwartz

The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

212 Third Avenue North, Suite 485

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64445-094-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64445-182-3 (ebook)

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021945921

Cover design: Mary Austin Speaker

Cover art: Doris Salcedo. Disremembered VIII, 2016. Sewing needles and silk thread. 34⅝ x sixteen and fifteen sixteenths x 4¾ in (88 x 43 x 12 cm). Copyright © the artist. Courtesy White Cube. Installation shot from Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning, on view at the Harvard Art Museums, November 4-April 9, 2017. © Doris Salcedo. Photo: President and Fellows of Harvard College.

for Chase, whose love frees form

Contents

[The original gesture]

✷

Interrogation Room

Death Revises Badly

Perennial

✷

Interrogation Room

Lecture on Time

Apples

Preferential Treatment

Meaning Well

Orderly Conduct

✷

Interrogation Room

Diet

Letter by Letter

Lecture on the History of the House

At Night, the Censor Watches His Wife Tuck Their Son into Bed

Parable

✷

Interrogation