The reasons a lot of literary critics opt not to write about poetry is that doing so is often to trying to explain the ineffable. Trying to come up with a few lines to describe Connie Voisine’s And God Created Women is like witnessing a religious ceremony from an unknown culture conducted in a language you don’t understand and then trying to explain exactly what was happening. The poems here are beautiful and Voisine is an I that keeps popping up, so at least we have some coordinates for navigation. However, besides those two things, the poems in this collection are about everyday things becoming elevated into something more via language.
And God Created Women contains known elements shaped into new
things. There are babies and horses here, for example. People ride the bus and
watch the news. Someone is angry and a wedding takes places after a murder. We
know the world Voisine writes about, but we encounter a different version of it
here. For example, we know the story of God creating Eve, but here we see it
differently, and the retelling calls her womb a 3-D printer and includes
Cheetos.
“Woman printed out
two sons
in pain she bore
them, and later,
much later, that
fratricide, another
management fail. God
gave her
other wonders, like
the flaming
swords barring her
from the garden,
a nice set of
earrings, and the recent
regional victory of
basketball team.
Much later, God’s
son was very kind
to her, though she
had slipped a bit,
what with the
poverty and prostitution.
And God Created Women might be a guide to find beauty in everyday
things. Or maybe it’s an exploration of how we can inhabit different spaces and
how those spaces either shape us or adapt to who we are. Maybe it’s both. Maybe
it’s neither. The only thing that’s clear here is that Voisine is a gifted
writer with a knack for unveiling things using a unique lens that reveals them
as new and makes us wonder about the details we might be missing.
—
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.
I read a lot of horror fiction, which means I tend to take the term “hardcore” with a grain of salt because it’s something often used by writers who think gore or sexual abuse is enough to mask their lack of storytelling skills. That said, Mik Grantham’s Hardcore, which contains a fair amount of fear and bodily fluids, delivers on every implied promise made by its title. Funny, harrowing, personal, and dark, the poems in Hardcore delve deep into things most people would rather not talk about. In the first four poems, Grantham tackles pregnancy scares, losing her favorite underwear, vomiting on herself at the gynecologist’s office, drunk people, and being afraid of anthrax. And that’s just the start. Depression, the aftermath of abortion, the 2016 elections, and dark childhood memories are also present here, and Grantham’s straightforward approach brings them to the page raw and unfiltered.
Hardcore is a door into Grantham’s life. The poems talk about events with
unfiltered honesty, and that makes the readers feel like they’re listening to a
friend telling them about the stuff they experienced. Here’s “Stay”:
the dogs fucked all
night long
we ordered chinese
food
there were noodles?
covered in soy
sauce
are you turned on??
you took my food
away?
maybe you wanted to
save some?
for later?
i always thought
that was a weird move
do you remember
this?
this was back when
you disappeared
often?
here we are?
hey, where are you
going now
While it might
sound like a gloomy collection—and it is gloomy—Hardcore is unique and fun to read. Bizarre cohesive element like
movies (especially ones with witches) and teeth (lost teeth, missing teeth,
teeth falling out, ripping teeth out) emerge from the poems as testaments to
the strange nature of the voice that created this book. Grantham’s style walks
a fine line between deadpan gallows humor and the kind of honesty that comes
out you without filter. Behind every poem here there is a story or a feeling,
and the delivery often makes deconstruction or analysis unnecessary. I guess
the word that fits here is blunt, but it’s a bluntness that’s strangely
beautiful, that makes you nod your head in agreement. Here’s “riding my bike”:
wishing someone would?
hit me with their car while i’m
on my way to work
Hardcore is
full of that weirdness that makes real life look scripted. For example,
Grantham’s mom is a recurring character in the collection. She saw the devil
and liked listening to Jewel. Her grandmother is also here, and the last poem,
the longest in the book, is about spending time with her. And then there’s
Grantham’s work as a waitress, which permeates the book and gives her stories
to tell.
This isn’t a beautiful collection about perfect moments;
it’s a rough, graphic, authentic, wonderfully humane collection about hating
your job, eating eggs, past relationships, remembering your childhood, and
peeing in parking lots. Grantham has a knack for bringing reality to the page
with outstanding economy of language, and that makes this a must read for
anyone who likes their poetry with a healthy dose of grit.
—
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.
Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros’s Becoming Coztototl is a short poetry collection that inhabits the interstitial space between this world and the spirit world, between Spanish and English, between the United States and Mexico. This is a collection about bodies and harsh realities, but also about hope, light, power, land, heritage, culture, and family. Hinojosa-Cisneros writes with conviction and strength, and these pages are a testament to that:
“As hijitos and
hijitas sit in manmade cages,
detentions they will
call them, their wings carry
los antepasados like
rayos de luz within.
And when the cage
gets lonelym los antepasados,
remind hijitas and
hijitos of the land they stand on.”
Becoming Coztototl comes in at 36 pages, but its short length doesn’t detract from the punch it packs. Displaced bodies, trauma, the struggles of migration, the weaving in and out of cultures; it’s all present here, and Hinojosa-Cisneros tackles these topics with an open heart and brings the power of first-hand experience—as a woman of color, as a Tejana—to the page. More than poetry, the words in this book add up to a celebration of mestizaje and a song that tells of the beauty of mixed languages. However, despite all the light here, there is a scream at the heart of this collection that wants to destroy “systemic oppression” and free every “marginalized body.”
FlowerSong Press is doing important work by bringing voices like Hinojosa-Cisneros to readers, and this book is a strong addition to their catalog. Their aesthetic is authenticity and diversity, and Becoming Coztototl delivers both. Hinojosa-Cisneros’s writing is strong, but not angry. Despite the heavy topics the book deals with, there is a lot of light, a lot of hope, in its pages. Unity, family, and community emerge as the pillars that hold us up, and reading these poems is to witness how beauty and love can be found even in harsh times.
“Mi’ja you are more
than
shared flesh. You
are
warrior at evening
time.
You are powerful
voice
at morning prayer.
You are
ancestral lucha
burning
sage under your bar
feet.”
Becoming Coztototl makes that fight communal, but it also reminds us if the beauty around it; the reasons why we keep fighting. Hinojosa-Cisneros is a fighter in that lucha, y estos poemas nos invitan a luchar con ella.
—
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.
Yuki Tanaka’s Séance in Daylight, which won the 2018 Frost Place Chapbook Competition, is one of those rare poetry collections that appeal to me both as a lover of poetry and a fan of horror fiction. At once full of light and darkness, the poems in this short book cover a plethora of topics. The lack of central theme, however, doesn’t detract from the work because Tanaka’s voice and the combination between light and dark gives the collection a sense of cohesion.
Séance in Daylight
is a superb title, and Tanaka delivers on everything it promises:
“A man drowned in a river.
We scoop up the water
and look at his face. Inside
his egg-shaped head, a white
spasm—death looks like birth.”
Ghosts, pain, transformation, and memories wrapped in the
emptions they birthed are the elements Tanaka used here to build his tiny
universe. This is a book I originally read in April of 2019, but the beauty of
some of these poems made it linger in my mind, so I decided to bring it back
for this National Poetry Month project. The best poetry, I think, paints
pictures vividly using language, and that’s what Tanaka does here in every
page. He tells stories that feel like gloomy fairytales, and that makes this
feel much longer that it is.
Mentioning horror in a poetry review is odd, but it fits
here. As the title suggests, Tanaka gets close to horror in these pages, often
offering lines that could be considered spooky:
“She opened her mouth as if her throat were a bird
ready to leave her. I thought she was going to sing
for the dead, because she saw them always.”
Séance in Daylight holds
secret conversation with other texts, which Tanaka reveals in the notes at the
end. However, what matters most here is that the feverish nature of the writing
creates a space in which the reader feel like they don’t always know if they’re
witnessing a memory, a nightmare, a fever dream, or a hybrid creatures that
brings them all together. Whatever the case, this chapbook is a great
introduction to Tanaka’s work as well as an enjoyable slice of poetic darkness.
—
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.
I love poetry that seems to contain living slices of the life of a writer. Angela Voras-Hills’s Louder Birds is the kind of collection made up of tiny portals that take you places, showing you what Voras-Hills has seen, done, and felt. At once heartfelt and elegant, the writing in this collection isn’t afraid to be straightforward, which allows it to feel real:
“Days after my mom finishes radiation, she’s in Vegas
on a Harley. It’s 80 degrees, and she sends selfies
with cocktails in the sun.”
Sometimes a poetry collection will demand deconstruction in
order to be enjoyed. That’s not the case here. Many of the poems here feel like
short stories that bring to life a specific time, place, or individual(s). A
grandpa lands a place on a lake. Someone uses a book to smash a centipede. The
poet looks through a window at a bloodstain on the floor of an abandoned house.
“Two foxes run circles/around the cement wall/of a reflecting pool.” These
poems are small tales that are large in significance. The beauty of great
poetry is that, much like a photograph, it can capture a moment in time and
hold it there forever, a thing trapped in amber that can be shared with the
world. Voras-Hills has a knack for trapping moments with words, and her talent
is in full display here.
Louder Birds inhabits
an interstitial space between the inner an outer worlds of the writer. The
inner one drives the memories and forms the frames of each poem. The outer
world provides a plethora of elements of cohesion, including water, snow, wood,
trees, grass, flowers, and a collection of animals that includes bears,
chipmunks, foxes, eels, worms, ants, an owl, a spider, and a decapitated
rabbit:
“On the bike path, a bunny’s body and blood
where the head should be. Something
has torn off its foot, something has eaten
its heart, its entrails frozen in snow.”
Voras-Hills is aware of her body as part of this world, and
her writing reminds us to pay attention, to live in the moment, to rejoice, to
observe the small things and rejoice in their secret meaning. The poems in Louder Birds are beautiful chronicles
that invite readers to recognize the transcendence of the commonplace. That
alone should make you read it.
—
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.
More than a poetry collection, Greg Santos’s Ghost Face is a written exploration of identity filtered through the memories of a fragmented past. In these poems, Santos explores his roots, digging around in the dirt with his bare hands to uncover his adoption, his ties to Cambodia, his heritage, and the way his childhood experiences shaped him. “I don’t want to forget,” states Santos in a poem titled “Forgetfulness,” and remembering, holding on to memories and passing them on, is a recurring theme in this collection. In a way, Santos wants to give his children the gift of knowing what came before, but he also wants to carry those memories inside himself and use them to avoid becoming a ghost, a thought that comes from one of the lessons his father taught him before passing away:
“You remember how
he always said elephants never forget.?
You remember
wishing you could transform yourself into an elephant.”
Ghost Face is a collection that embraces plurality and shows the beauty that lives
in it. Santos’s writing exists within the frame of his life, the places,
people, animals, and music that marked him. It is also about fatherhood, writing,
and the lingering scars of the Khmer Rouge regime. His searching for meaning
and his obsession with holding on translate into poems about the immense
significance of tiny things. Yes, there is darkness here, buy there is also
humor and joy. Santos faces death, but sees it as tiny in comparison to hearing
his children laugh. That balance between sadness and beauty permeates the
collection.
Despite tackling so
many themes, Ghost Face is mainly
about identity, about being. In “Cambodian,” Santos explores the interstitial,
often confusing space inhabited by those who swim between cultures, by those
with deep roots elsewhere who are now far from those roots but in a place that
feels like home:
“Are you
Cambodian?
So, were you
born in Cambodia then?
Have you ever
even been to Cambodia?
Then how can you
consider yourself Cambodian?
How do you mean?
Most folks think
you’re Filipino. Remember when someone put you on a Twitter-thread for Filipino
writers?
How did that
make you feel?
?It’s the last
name. Santos throws them off.?
SANTOS. It’s
Portuguese, right??
Honestly, this
is confusing…?
It’s like you
are actually Cambodian or something…”
While there is nothing in terms of voice or style that resembles his
work, some of the poems in Ghost Face reminded me of why I love the poetry of
Langston Hughes so much. Like Hughes, Santos seems to be holding everything he
loves in his hands while writing: his children, his parents, his childhood. He
is in touch with the things that live in his heart, and has no problem sharing
them with us.
Ultimately, the best thing about this book is that it reminds us that
we can talk to ghosts through writing and reading. Words can hold the past and
carry it into the future; they can dig into our history and heritage as they
forge new memories and allow us to share them with others. More than a poetry
collection, Ghost Face is Santos sharing pieces of his life with us, and what
he has to share is worthy of your time and attention.
—
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.
Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is like a newborn scream that’s been held in for eons. Sharp, strong, unapologetic, beautiful, and angry, the writing in this collection is a celebration of language and rhythm, and the words on the page run like the blood from a wound caused by racism. Rae tackles bigotry, dismantles the innate inequalities of the American Dream, takes the South to task for its history, puts a spotlight on microagressions, and screams in righteous indignation. Then…well, then the first poem is over. Sounds like too much, I know, but that’s exactly what she does. Here, as proof, is the opening of the poem that titles the collection, “Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat”:
The South
will birth a new kind
of
haunting in your black girl-ness,
your black
woman-ness becomes
a poached
confection—honeyed enigma?
pledging
to be allegiant. The muddied silk robe
waving in
their amber grains of bigotry. Your skin—
a
rhetorical question, bloodstained equation?
no one
wants to answer. You will be the umber,
tawny,
terracotta tongue spattered on their American
flag,
beautiful brown-spangled anthem. You will be
the bended
knee in the boot of their American
Dream, and
they will stitch your mouth the color
of
patriarchy, call it black girl magic when you rip
the seams.
Southern Belle is just another way to say:
stayed in
her place on the right side of the pedestal.
As a person
of color, I’ve always been wary of the “I don’t see color” crowd because
hearing I don’t see color strikes me not as an anti-racist sentiment but more
as a denial of racism, like it’s a problem we no longer have to fight against
because whoever uttered those words is better than that. It’s also a line that
more or less translates to “I don’t see color…so I don’t see the bigotry, the
history, the fear, the injustice, or the systemic racism.” Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is the opposite of
that phrase, and it is ware of that phrase. In fact, Rae has a line that
embodies everything I’ve said so far: “Saying: I don’t see color means, I don’t
see you.” The poems here are a hand that comes up to teach a lesson to a
hand that moves toward a Black woman’s hair while a voice says “I love your
hair! Can I touch it?” This collection is rooted in the Black experience, in
the realities, history, beauty, and fears of the Black female body. Take the
first of the dozen entries that make up “Guidebook for Those Considering the
South Home”:
Long back roads?
still
rattle me.
Make me
fear being asked to step out—?
the night
stick, the gun. Body turned to roadkill,
left on
the curb. Forgotten.
No poet
exists in vacuum, but writing poetry that is at once personal and universal is
no easy task. Rae does that here, and the result is a book that demands to be
read with clenched fists and an open heart. Rae is at the center of most of the
writing here, but she has deep roots that dig into the country’s past, that dig
into slavery as well as more recent events that showcase the disparities that
still lie at the core of our society like cancerous tumors. The poems here
speak of Rae, but they also speak of experiences that many gave faced as
children, in college, and as adult women. They’re also poems that jump between
history and the present to decry contemporary issues with deep historical
roots:
“………..Why
you keep stealing?
our blues
and calling it a pop song?
Convincing
the masses you made our pain
fashion
statements. Our twerk be copywritten,
you get no
royalties from our two-step.?
Our lingo
isn’t for sale, so stop plagiarizing
our
hood-speech, mainstreaming our “broken”
English.
This America be mass producer
of
appropriation, factory full of our features, ripping
our
packages open searching for damaged goods.
This black
be authentic. This black be original.?
This
melanated music be off-market.
This slang
be sold out and never returning to shelves.
This
dialect be discontinued, this black too high.
Out of
reach.”
Of
children, Rae says “They will never know where they’re headed/until they see
all the immaculate places/they’ve come from.” This line is an invitation to
share history, to use the past as a way to build a better future while never
losing sight of what came before in order to never again make the same
mistakes. In that regard, this collection is not just one all fans of poetry
should read; it’s one we should be assigning in schools.
—
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.
There are rare poetry collections that make me feel like the beat aesthetic never went away but instead crawled into a corner in a dark bar and somehow refined itself into something new, something as spiritual and strange as the original incarnation but shorter, sharper, and tied to contemporary America in ways that cut to the heart of what the country is and has suffered. Noah C. Lekas’s Saturday Night Sage is one of those collections, and that becomes obvious from the start:
“I awoke
to a bar tab
&
prayer beads,
I believe,
I believe,
I’ve been
redeemed!
“Bodhi!” I
cried,
in the
slums
of the
shadow factory.
“Brahmajyoti.”
I prophesied,
into a
broken toilet
on Main
St.
on Mayday
in Milwaukee
rejoicing
with devotees,
on the 4th
of July in Brooklyn
drinking
Jameson with karmis.”
As the
title implies, this is a collection about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the
spiritual that can be found “in the bowels of Saturday night.” This is a book
about booze and hobos, smoky bars and drug dealers, mythology and cigarettes,
jazz and the blues. Lekas is a chronicler of urban nights, and he perfectly
nails the atmosphere that usually accompanies the themes, places, and people he
writes about.
The beauty
of Saturday Night Sage is that it
feels fresh, not like a Tom Waits/Charles Bukowski pastiche, which is often the
case with poetry that deals with the drunk, the broken, the downtrodden. The
voice here often sounds like a song, a dark blues you can easily imagine coming
from a stage that holds only one person, a chair, a guitar, and a microphone.
Lekas understands how rhythm affects the way a poem is read, and he uses both
language, line cutes, and space on the page to dictate a variety of rhythms
that make his lines hit harder.
Saturday Night Sage occupies an interstitial space
between a place we’ve all been in—a place where we dread and crave the end of
the night—and a space in which we can openly discuss the darkness at the core
of Americana, the sadness of drunken souls stumbling through the night in
search of something they can’t remember or trying to run away from something
that’s inside them. There are no throwaway poems here, but of the crowning
jewels of the collection is “Midwestern,” which is beautiful in its gritty
reality and speaks of a seemingly irreversible process that has affected many
cities across the country:
“The
Wisconsin of my youth was stranded
somewhere between the collapse
of the industrial revolution
& the crack epidemic.
The Wisconsin of my adulthood is lost
somewhere between the promise of restoration
& the stoic acceptance of absolute abandonment.
I, like most of the men in my family
punched a cold steel time clock
& I swept floors
cleared dishes
cleaned cars
emptied trashcans
painted houses
demolished bathrooms
installed
cabinets
remodeled kitchens
built crates
& repaired instruments.
I watched
the disintegration
of a hard blue American backbone
& the rising tide of an industry-less land,
industriously destitute
the streets of my hometown
are lined with empty buildings.
The malls offer absurd free rent signing deals
to new retailers
& the factories just buckle
under the weight of it all.”
Saturday Night Sage is short and powerful. It’s the
literary equivalent of a thick cloud of smoke rising through stale air in front
of a neon sign. Lekas has experienced Saturday night, has spoken to those who
make it their home, and he takes readers into that world with ease. You should
grab a drink and join him.
—
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.
Nikki Wallschlaeger’s Waterbaby is a tender, angry song for a broken world. However, it’s not the kind of song meant to heal; it exposes the truth, screams against injustice, shows lives full of bad moments and “working shit jobs,” and, ultimately, offers guidance to navigate the whole mess:
“Perhaps
it’s best not to trust
the
politics of people who
haven’t
washed their own
dishes in
twenty years.”
Waterbaby, Wallschlaeger’s third collection,
is about being a Black woman in contemporary America, but it’s about much more.
The poems here deal with everyday life, motherhood, family, and suffering. The
body is always present. So is the passage of time and the realities that make
life hard. Wallschlaeger tackles everything from her point of view, but most of
the resulting poetry feels universal. Her thoughts and feelings belong to her,
but some of those feelings will make readers nod their head in quiet agreement:
“Why do I
feel so old
when I
look so young
Have a
night of ok fun
& feel
better & younger
refreshed,
maybe lovelier
but in the
morning
I feel
just as old again.”
The
conversations Wallschlaeger has in this collection are simultaneously with
herself, with everyone else, and even with some dead poets like William
Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and Willian Carlos Williams. In each poem—and they
vary greatly in terms of voice, rhythm, and length—Wallschlaeger gets to the
core of what she wants to say without mincing words. Her approach is to slice
to the heart, and it’s something that will leave a mark on readers, as there
are lines here that punch with the power of truths many would rather not
discuss in public:
“Plantations
are prisons & prisons produce plantations,
how our
runaway slave feet gotta close-read the rides.”
Another
great example is this crushing line from “American Children,” which is a gem:
“I’m not
sure the children understand what heroism could be, except that it involves
weapons and blood on the ground and sacrifice.”
“I’m the
Black girl dozing with bleary/commuters on the Route 12 bus,” says
Wallschlaeger, and while that might be true, she is much more here; a keen
observer, a voice of truth, an astute chronicler. Waterbaby is beautiful in its musicality and Wallschlaeger has a
vibrant rhythm that carries through in every poem, but this is a book that cuts
deep into that amalgamation of beauty and horror we call America. This book
claims the poet would come back from the dead to celebrate the end of
capitalism. This book discusses the expectations women have to deal with. This
book talks openly about doing the work but being tired of it. This book
mentions guns as the everyday reality they are and shows the wounds of the
“last four years of spiraling national leadership.”
There is a
difference between angry poetry, which can come from anything and everything,
and the kind of righteous dissatisfaction and indignation that holds Waterbaby together. This song isn’t just
a healing song; this is the song we should play as we march into battle against
racism and as we imagine the party we’d have after the death of capitalism.
Read this celebration of language and then join me in eagerly awaiting
Wallschlaeger’s next collection.
—
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.
As a musician, I’ve heard others discuss how those who don’t normally play percussion are often good at it because they go with what feels and sounds right and are not distracted by rules and regulations. Reading Shannon Kirk’s My Dreadful Darling made me think of that. Kirk is an accomplished writer, but she’s a novelist with a knack for creepy, dark, eloquent thrillers, not a poet. However, she writes poetry, which makes her a poet, and this collection proves it. In the introduction to this book, she talks about writing poetry as a little girl and then hiding or destroying it and how that practice followed her into adulthood. Then came the pandemic, and with it came this exercise, which morphed into a wonderful book.
“In these
pages, I’ve compiled poems, thoughts, letters, and questions I’ve plucked from
my published novels, from works in progress, from drafts of manuscripts that
changed in the course of editing, my journals, and from fragments of bits I’ve
generated over many years,” states Kirk in her introduction. In other word,
this is a collection built from fragments, notes, thought, and words from other
books. That said, it all fits together well because different kind of love and
death are cohesive elements that make this feel interconnected.
The beauty of My Dreadful Darling is how it seems like a collection of things found in other places, meant for other books, but then it turns into something unified in which the voice carries through while wearing different masks. Love, for example, is present in many of the poems, but it’s love that goes from that of a mother to a lover, from unrequited to explosive, from painful to playful. Kirk writes about going and staying, about inhabit the places where things are wrong but where we hover above moment and do nothing to put an end to it, to move to a safer place. She also writes about the spaces where love lives all by itself, drowning in memories or anger or distance:
“Of the
thousand things
I passed
today, none were themselves
All were
you
Of the
thousand sounds
An hour
ago, none were anything
But your
voice
In this
city, from the country, to the other sea
Where you
live
Is there
anything other than you?
Your
breath?
Am I to
encounter anything at all
But you?”
Yes, love,
ghosts, lists, memories; they are all pieces of things we collect to form a
life, and Kirk collects them here to show us a variety of lives, to open the
door to her story and to other stories she has created. The result is a
collection with superb rhythm that dances between the anger of a scorned lover
unsatisfied with what she has to the mellowness and warmth of a day spent
enjoying an unstructured existence in which looking at the clock isn’t
necessary:
“We’ve
gone to the other extreme now
Poking
sticks in ponds to watch ripples
Biding
time, watching clouds, doing nothing
But we are
happy, listless with schedules scattered
This life
unstructured tic toes in time we threw away”
Some of
the poems in My Dreadful Darling have
notes that inform readers of where they come from or what work in progress they
belong to, but these notes are ultimately irrelevant because Kirk’s natural
talent for rhythm overpowers everything. The notes and the introduction let the
reader know this is a Frankenstein’s monster of poetry, but the sum of its
parts makes its fragmented nature irrelevant. Take the last lines of “Lisa’s
Preference for Painting,” which come from Kirk’s novel Viebury Grove but stand as a testament to her cadence:
honing of
sight for depth control. Painting requires
mental and
physical strength. Love brings weakness.”
My Dreadful Darling is a good thing born of a bad time.
Kirk used the time the pandemic forced her to stay locked in to dig through her
words and put this together. However, more than an engaging experiment, it
turned into a collection of poems that revealed another talent. I hope we never
go through a pandemic again, but I hope something else forces Kirk to mine her
past, present, and future works again so that isn’t her last book of poems.
—
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.
![[PANK]](https://pankmagazine.com/wp-content/themes/pank/assets/images/pank-logo-large.png){kind=logo}
