Melancholia (an Essay) by Kristina Marie Darling (A Review by Gina Myers)

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Melancholia, Kristina Marie Darling’s new collection, is referred to as an “essay,” but instead of finding a traditional essay inside the covers of this tiny book (part of Ravenna Press’s Pocket Series), the reader encounters an example of the verb form of the word: to attempt or try. The book is composed of apostrophes, definitions, footnotes, and glossaries. Through these series of fragments, Darling attempts to relay the story of a courtship and what is left after it is over.

The book opens with an epigraph from Emma Bolden’s The Sad Epistles: “If only I if only. / This is not simple to say.” This seems to work as a guiding principle of the work to follow: it is not simple to say, and, therefore, it will come out in small fragments, rendering the story incomplete. After a brief apostrophe addressed to “Dearest,” Darling provides a seven part definition for “noctuary” that includes keeping a record of what passes in the night, an idea of waking from a dream to begin a series of portraits, and several more ideas that involve either close examination or deep introspection/self-awareness, until, finally, she ends with, “To select and omit, as a poet would.” And so the story that follows is a noctuary: the details have been carefully selected and much has been omitted, and there is something dreamlike about it all, as if these fleeting memories are details remembered upon waking.

The story that is told revolves around objects: lockets and buttons, earrings and cufflinks. There is something antiquated about the story–the setting more Victorian with its fields and country estates, its red velvet pillows, courtship rituals, and the heroine’s delicate white skin and silk dresses. Whether or not the story is a dream is unclear, as Darling writes in “Noctuary (III)”:

“The dream gave rise to a lapse in the accuracy of her meticulous ledger. A velvet ribbon nestled among its luminous white pages.”

Perhaps the most interesting sections of the collection are the footnotes for which there is no main text, similar to Jenny Boully’s great work, The Body. In Melancholia, the footnotes obsess over what has already been shared in the story that precedes them, rehashing the same images–nightingales, a jewelry box, and the locket. Each of the footnote sections here has ten or eleven notes, with the fourth note always being a definition. The footnotes seem to offer a variety of possible futures for the heroine, increasingly involving either oceans or fire. Whether intentional or not, the burned country estate recalls Mr. Rochester’s in Jane Eyre.

Overall, while experimental in form, Melancholia (an Essay) comes across as more traditional in content. It is an enjoyable, quick read, that is well-written and concise. Like the objects within the piece, the book itself seems like a small, precious thing, but it does not quite deliver what the title seems to promise. It is not a treatise or rumination on melancholia, not at least how many probably understand that word coming into the collection. However, like “noctuary,” Darling offers her own definitions for “melancholia,” a verb, which includes a shared definition (though phrased slightly differently) with noctuary:

“To follow, to ask, to be led.” Further, she defines it as “To lose, forfeit, or misplace a love token,”and, “To name, as a historian would.”

Gina Myers is the author of A Model Year (Coconut Books 2009) and several chapbooks, including most recently False Spring (Spooky Girlfriend 2012). Her second full-length collection, Hold It Down, will be published by Coconut Books in 2013. She lives in Atlanta, GA.