Texas Tech University Press
79 pages, $17.56

Review by Ryan Rydzewski
 

“What good is storytelling,” someone asks the speaker in Rachel Mennies’s first poetry collection, The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, “if I can’t tell you stories the way I want to?”

The question implies an elusive truth in the stories we tell each other—stories altered, perhaps, by embellishment, by the unreliability of memory, or by lies of omission; stories modified to spare their receivers pain. But what happens when we stake our identities on such stories? What if those stories define not only ourselves, but also our culture and where we come from? Does the avoidance of pain really outweigh the importance of truth? What good are stories about our past, after all, if we can’t lean on them with confidence in our present?

The winner of Texas Tech University Press’ Walt McDonald First Book Prize, The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards tackles these questions by peeling back thick layers of memory and family history. The speaker, a Jewish woman in modern America, attempts to reconcile her grandmother’s stories with the historical facts available to her, and ends up relearning her own identity in the process. Mennies’s poems—steeped in religion, Jewish history, and carefully chosen imagery—are both straightforward enough for clarity and sparse enough to leave room for implication. Continue reading →