The Architecture of Persona: Steven Price Writes Houdini

At 135 pages, Steven Price’s “Anatomy of Keys” is no slim volume of verse; how could it be? Tracing the track of a famous life full of remarkable acts, Price transforms a historical figure into a fictional character, rendering his story in verse. Harry Houdini, whose incredible escapes made him one of the most well-known men of his day, is revealed in Price’s work to have been a playful child, a vulnerable performer, a loyal husband, a grief-besieged son, as well as the escape artist we know, that man of the modern age. So Price explores the architecture of persona, challenging our assumptions about headline makers and revealing the human interior of fame:

          Offstage, he looked
too ordinary in his strength to be so;
short and stumpish like a pugilist, he lived
by his fists, all ox-neck and thick root,
all barrel-chest, battered like a kitchen chair.

We find ourselves immersed in a work of imagination, a fictionalized biography that proceeds from Houdini’s childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood, exploring the years Houdini’s escapes were known around the world.

Through closed forms — the sonnet, the ghazal — and intricate interior rhythms, regulated rhyme schemes, free verse, prose poems, sections in series, Price crafts a collection of astute observations:

So that, trembling, fingering my skin, I began to doubt: had I
accomplished this, who was not remarkable, no more than others?

This, which sang in me for a time, then fell silent.

Months of dust and rain, abandoned, in flickering railcars. It is true: to
live without illusion is to live without hope.

Thus the fragility of the self is alive in even the most incredible acts. Price gives us a three-dimensional Harry Houdini with an interior life as rich as his performing one.

Though “Anatomy of Keys” is not a biography, not in the technical sense, Steven Price’s capacity for empathy offers something equally compelling: a life’s story rich in detail, which challenges our expectations and lingers long after we finish the final line.

—Carlin M. Wragg