Inside the Whale: A Novel in Verse

Written entirely in verse, Peterson's second book (after Beautiful Piece) follows Irishman Jim O'Connor, an aspiring poet and successful alcoholic, as he moves disastrously through life in modern Chicago. In addition to Peterson's narrative, plenty of Jim's "actual" poems appear throughout, facilitating an effortless shifting between third and first person accounts of the drunken bard's exploits. Early on, Jim reveals his preoccupation with the memory of a "flaxen haired girl" named Anne who was killed when an intoxicated Jim%E2%80%94busy pontificating on his future poetic successes%E2%80%94wrecked the car they were in. Though haunted by her memory and belabored by survivor guilt, Jim nevertheless hosts "legendary" bacchanals aboard the yacht he inherited from his father, and falls in love again%E2%80%94this time with a "raven-haired beauty named mae fairweather." The entire story is essentially Jim falling in and out of love, drinking, thinking about writing an epic poem, and worrying about why he survived and Anne didn't. Heavy-handed nods to obvious influences (e.g., Moby Dick and the many concomitant maritime and whale-related metaphors) and an unselfconscious deployment of exhausted poetic conventions (see aforementioned varicolored-haired women) far outweigh the occasional moments of emotionally effective poetic economy. While the pace afforded by the book's spatial poetics is dependably engaging, the verse itself is ultimately inconsistent, repetitive, and worn-out. Illus. (Apr.)