[REVIEW] By Some Happenstance by Dominic Albanese

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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“these poems are letters

addressed to whom it may concern

general statements about life

the hereafter

the things that puzzle me

feelings I have

and can’t talk about

not from shame

but from ignorance

or unwillingness”

Those lines, which appear in the second poem of the book, serve as a perfect introduction to Dominic Albanese’s By Some Happenstance. Simple, straightforward, and heartfelt, Albanese’s work does away with any pretentiousness and instead focuses on trying to communicate complicated feelings and thoughts in the easiest way possible. The result is a collection that speaks from the heart directly into your heart.

Albanese’s life beats at the core of his poems. He writes about heartbreak, the memories of the women in his life, fishing, and fixing cars at a garage. He shares flashes of cities he’s visited and thing’s he has done. He talks about what hurts him and how “these words offer the medication/my soul needs to say what I mean.” Luckily for readers, he’s great at saying exactly what he means:

“the sameness of the days

is begging to wear on me

like old shoes, too long kept”

There are two things here that go above and beyond what Albanese puts on the page. The first is an inescapable nostalgia. When Albanese writes abut the river or New York or San Francisco, we feel his need to be there, the way those places and the events that happened there touched him. The second element is darkness. This is a collection about many things, and some of those things include death, living paycheck-to-paycheck, memories of Vietnam, broken relationships, and bad nights. Albanese tackles both things with the same candor, and that makes By Some Happenstance feel more like listening to an old friend that reading a poetry collection.

I first read Albanese’s poetry a few years ago when I read his collection of Vietnam poems Bastards had the Whole Hill Mined. His work stuck with me because it was gritty and brutally honest. It also seemed to be aware of how close we are to death. There is a bit of that here as well, and Albanese—now in his 70s—writes of what’s ahead while also talking about everything that came before, the things he loved, and the bad choices he made.

By Some Happenstance is part biography and part collection of vignettes dressed up as poetry. The economy of language here shows that Albanese cares about communicating effectively and getting as much as he can into a small a space as possible. This is a collection once can easily read in one sitting, but the heart of the poems will stick with readers for a long time after they turn the last page.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.