Tiny Reviews

[TINY REVIEWS] Esteban Rodríguez on Cruz/Randall/Glasglow

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WORDS BY ESTEBAN RODRÍGUEZ

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Dregs by Cynthia Cruz (Four Way Books)

In her fifth collection, Cynthia Cruz’s Dregs explores the remnants of human destruction and how one must navigate the maze of social ambiguity associated with the collapse of everyday structures. Cities are besieged, winters reign and weep inside the world’s inhabitants, and the speaker, absorbed in this half-lucid dream of longing and death, enters, page after page, an array of abandoned settings, searching for meaning where there appears to be none. With a concise, lyrical, and surreal poetic style, Dregs reads as a kind of post-apocalyptic catalog of how we’ve been “Forever changed // By the sickening poverty / Of sorrow.” Just over fifty pages, Dregs is a relatively quick read, but the images are haunting, and with death lingering at the end of every poem, Cruz is sure to leave you pondering your own existence long after you’ve put the book down.

 

Refuse by Julian Randall (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Julian Randall’s Refuse explores identity, binaries, masculinity, sexuality, family, and the politics and social constructs that govern our relationship with ourselves and others. These poems don’t attempt to sugarcoat its themes and subjects, but they don’t sacrifice lyricism, emotion, and a much needed urgency at the expense of chipping away at a greater truth. Additionally, Randall captures moments that become meditative explorations of what it means be black (and biracial) within the frame of societal expectations. For example, the poem “Fright Night Lights #20” details a football teammate’s pectoral tear while bench pressing. The speaker helps his teammate to the office, but while at the office, as the staff studies them, he begins to fear the “slow guillotine   the brief blade / of a white woman’s smile” and how quickly that gaze can become something both distressing and dangerous. The collection is bold and unapologetic, a debut that shows Randall’s promising career as a poet and a curator of the issues that deserve to be confronted and revealed to a wider audience.

deciduous qween by Matty Layne Glasglow (Red Hen Press)

Selected by Richard Blanco as the winner of the 2018 Benjamin Saltman Award, Matty Lane Glasglow’s deciduous qween is a vibrant collection that examines the queer world around us and how environments influence and shape our understanding of identity, sexuality, and of the perceptions we have of our bodies and character. In many of the poems, Glasglow takes small moments from the past and meditates on their importance in the present. In “deciduous qween, II,” for example, the speaker reflects on his first performance “prancing around [the] living room / in a Mickey Mouse onesie,” and through lyrical musings on that event, is able to accept who they always knew they were:

That afternoon, I felt sparkling silver gleam

sprout from my skull like all my bones were

precious metal, & I just wanted to let them

shine, to let anyone hold my body in the light

so I could look like I was worth something.

deciduous qween delves deep into this question of worth, the value of knowing who we are and who we want to be. To quote Eduardo C. Corral, “Vulnerability, brashness, grief, and astonishment leap off the page,” and there is no doubt that you too will find yourself within the pages of this book, and with the same glamor, glory, and glitter and make these poems important and memorable, you’ll have no choice but to “Let your crown shine.”

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Esteban Rodríguez is the author of Dusk & Dust, forthcoming from Hub City Press (September 2019). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Puerto del Sol, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He lives with his family and teaches in Austin, Texas.

[TINY REVIEWS] Esteban Rodriguez on feast gently by G.C. Waldrep, American Radiance by Luisa Muradyan, and Holy Moly Carry Me by Erika Meitner

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When Gabino Iglesias approached me with the idea to write a poetry column for PANK, there was absolutely no doubt that I was on board. Immediately, I sorted through the pile of books I was reading, picked three and began writing. My aim here, and of the column as a whole, is not to provide traditional reviews, but rather short overviews that will hopefully engage future readers to poetry collections they might enjoy. I won’t guarantee that the collections chosen will always be recent (published within the past year or so), since poetry and certain books are, after all (and excuse the cliché here) timeless. Nevertheless, for this first installment, I chose three fairly recent collections that embody today’s social, political, and spiritual landscape. They have cemented their place in the literary world not only by being awarded the William Carlos Williams Award, or the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, or the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry, but by being books that one can return to, as I often found myself doing when writing about them. Let’s hope you find as much enjoyment in these works as I know I did. Cheers!

feast gently by G.C. Waldrep (Tupelo Press)

In his sixth collection, G.C. Waldrep explores the tensions and harmonies between the body and spirit, presenting poems that are both beautiful and devastatingly urgent. Like his previous collections, Waldrep interweaves the universal with the personal, writing in a manner that is philosophical, spiritual, and conversational all at once. The seventh anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan provides a meditation on language and its shortcomings. A real-life funeral expands on the role chance plays in one’s death, and how God reveals secrets we are only briefly privy to. Other poems read like fables (“To the Embalmers” immediately comes to mind), and we are left witnessing the tragedies and daily miracles of the world feast gently so skillfully depicts. Waldrep’s poetry is at times demanding, but if given the right amount of care and attention, you’ll find that you are all the better, and wiser, for it.

 

American Radiance by Luisa Muradyan (University of Nebraska Press)

Winner of the 2017 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Luisa Muradyan’s American Radiance reflects the complexities of the immigrant experience, and, through humor, pop culture allusions, and lyrical playfulness, highlights the exodus from one’s homeland and what it means to assimilate in America. Muradyan’s poems are not only concise, but funny, drawing on a plethora of figures (Prince, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Macho Man Randy Savage) that guide us through moments that are nostalgic, bittersweet, and at times utterly heartbreaking. Muradyan’s juxtapositions are clever and surprising, and with poems like “We Were Cosmonauts” (which narrates the speaker’s journey from Moscow to the U.S., while drawing comparisons to a game of Tetris), we see her poetic range, and see how moving a collection can be when it combines humor, history, folklore, and experiences so many can relate to.

Holy Moly Carry Me by Erika Meitner (BOA Editions, Ltd.)

In her fifth collection, Erika Meitner wrestles with the anxieties of modern-day suburbia. Holy Moly Carry Me is an outstanding and relevant collection that never shies away from exposing the tensions one faces in America, detailing, for example, what it means to be a mother raising a white son and black son in today’s political climate, or what it means to live in a region of the U.S. (Appalachia) not fully understood by others. Meitner has the ability to use seemingly unremarkable moments, such as a trip to the Dollar General, to examine relationships, identity, gun violence, teacher salaries, the middle class, poverty, and the responsibility to ponder these questions from a place of relative privilege. This collection is a testament that the mundane isn’t ever truly mundane, and that when it comes to our societal structures and the way in which they influence our behavior, there is always room to explore the truths that lie beneath the surface.

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Esteban Rodríguez is the author of Dusk & Dust, forthcoming from Hub City Press (September 2019). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Puerto del Sol, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He lives with his family and teaches in Austin, Texas.