The Fabulous Beasts Book

Even though this books of poems is divided into four parts (Broken connections, Forbidden testimonies, The child-martyr, The fabulous beasts), the main underlying theme is that of broken connections. The first part of the book begins with a fine poem (Broken Connections) in which a traveller is cut off by snow in a remote cabin in the country:[...]
Across the snow-maddened miles
we shout questions and answers.
The air is choppy as a river.
He is saying, Can you hear-
as the telephone lines crackles, like laughter,
then goes dead.
It is dead.As we read the poem, it becomes clear that what is dead is more than the line; it is the fragile connection to people we care about or, or are supposed to care about. Thus the ambiguity of whether the following lines refer to the outer or the inner landscape, and if the inner landscape, whose:It is not your storm,
it is not your life.
Not a way of explaining the churning sky,
your quiet panic,
your curious smile of betrayal.Yet, the world of broken connections is where we live, and deep down we are aware of this: [...]
now that the telephone cable failed
and words cannot be used.
You are here.
Your soul softens, gradually, recognizing
the air, the snow, the silence
of broken connections.We can find instances of the main theme thoughout the poetry: Abstract highways that rush nowhere, ice-bound paths and ditches we fear to cross, a river that "...plunges everywhere, drowning", heavy absences, thinly poisonous memories, "slashes in the flesh that become eccentric scars", failures of love, hiding, a burgled home (Breaking and Entering), insomnia, sleep gifts we would like to return, hanging up the phone, looking away, lies lovingly told, a friend moving out of our lives, excessive travel, "breathing spaces that fade into spaces", death and dying.

This collection of poetry also includes a memorable short story, A Posthumous Sketch, which is a chronicle of alienation and deepening despair triggered by a drowning at sea, and a veritable case study of broken connections.

Oates sums it up in a father's inexplicable, awkward and nervous last visit (Occult):[...]the language we invent may be a means
to get us closer,
to allow us to touch one another,
and then to turn back.