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Tidal Wave by Kofi Antwi

June 3, 2021 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 18 pgs.
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Tidal Wave by Kofi Antwi is a slim chapbook that explores themes of identity and the drowned out voices of society. The art work is superb — the cover itself speaks to the power of words in this collection as they rise like a tidal wave.

The opening poem “Out of the Wreckage” sets the stage of loss, with a brother gone and “a belated shower/of roses” — signifying a posthumous recognition of a wrong done to the departed, but it comes too little too late. It mirrors the recent reactions of society when racially charged killings by police occur against Black men across America and as a society we only rise up after the fact before the anger/rage fades and little is done to correct the system.

 from "Sundays" (pg. 6)

the harbor is burdened land, tampered
sea - a ripple in the
current halts it's viability.

at bay we, mourn our past, balance
tomorrow's deficiencies,
dashes of mint dove

Antwi’s poems are mournful but full of hope, a dichotomy that mirrors the society that welcomes all to be free without actual freedom to be themselves. We are burdened by the past and mourn it, but we continue to move forward to balance the good with the bad. However, some of these poems feel rough and unfinished, like there’s something hidden beneath the emptiness and the words chosen haven’t carried the full meaning the poet wishes to convey. This could be intentional, but it didn’t work for me in many instances.

But the strongest poems in the chapbook come at the end from “all hail the city of doom” and “tidal wave” to “birth into a nation” and “recollections of the Gold Coast.” This is where Tidal Wave by Kofi Antwi shines in its analysis of what it means to be an American immigrant full of hope but stepped on and cast aside as a silent minority while chasing an American dream.

RATING: Tercet

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Made of Air by Naomi Thiers

May 27, 2021 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 58 pgs.
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Made of Air by Naomi Thiers pays homage to the courage of the feminine — from the woman who’s daughter is disappeared in “Lions” to the woman in “A Kind of Prayer” who hopes her poetry will help tell her intricate story.  In “All or None,” Thiers speaks of Carolyn whose “rays of joy” refused “to leave anyone in shadow.” Each of these women seem to be like the air around us, lifting up others, struggling to survive, pushing back against the heaviest burdens and losses. Their spines may bend from time to time under the weight but there is an internal courage that lifts them higher.

Fear is in your bread
an you must choke it down.
(from "Refugee, 15")
snatched a Sun Chips
and whirled back to her perch,
one crossed leg
bouncing.
Her eyes never lifted.
(from "Feral")

These two poems provide different perspectives on survival. Both are eating with the fear of starvation at their backs, but while the refugee seems to have hope on the horizon despite fleeing the home they know, the feral girl has closed her off to possibility. Thiers work is as complex and as simple as the lives lived around the globe, with the common threads of courage, grief, and perseverance threaded throughout.

Made of Air by Naomi Thiers reminds us that our lives are briefer than we think but as we age, the realization comes more quickly that our time is fleeting. Our mark is made on those lives we touch, the courage we muster when needed, and the love we share together. “The sky and seasons inch the same as in 1976,/as if I’ve stood still while decades slid past,//and I savor the sense of timelessness,/this gem I never knew hid inside my bumpy life./For I feel my own 16-year-old inside, humming/eager, terrified–real as the slow/rain of wild and gentle losses.//” (“The Pearl”).

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her appearance with Jane Schapiro and Miles David Moore at Gaithersburg Book Festival:

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Man on Terrace with Wine by Miles David Moore

May 26, 2021 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 90 pgs.
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Man on Terrace with Wine by Miles David Moore reads like the title sounds — a selection of poetic ruminations on life. But these poems are never far from humor or pop culture. Moore has several poems that will make readers stop for a moment to consider — what would it be like if Elvis were in heaven and Hitler was in hell? There are complex emotions explored and the section titles should give you some inclination of what is on the mind of the man sitting on that terrace with win — “It Serves You Right,” “There’s No Crying in Baseball,” and “To Live Completely and a Thousandfold.”

In the first section, Moore’s poems reflect on the idea of “perception,” like what we perceive to be true. A prime example of this is in “A Taste to Die For,” after a quote about Americans’ love for soda and Afghanis love for death. The poem deftly points out, “The man who took aim at you thinks he knows/the things he loves, and the things you love.//” But reading to the end of the poem, it is clear that neither side really knows or understands the other — there is a significant breakdown of communication in favor of perception. In “The Good Fight,” Moore again tackles perception in a reflective piece regarding WWII. The soldier is brave and strong, but in the present, the soldier must relearn how to lace shoes, walk with a cane, and more. “The sky is hazy above you,/a fog of dreams and memories./The decades are your backpack now./” and the soldier must not “look down” or “slip” but for a far different reason today than on the battlefield.

In the second and final section, Moore shifts away from perception into reality — the reality of hurricanes, pop culture (as real as that can be), and so much more. One of my favorite images in these sections comes from “Grandma and the Hurricane” (pg. 41), “The wind is so strong that it blows the constellations around in the sky. Never losing their shape, they are cookie cutters tumbling against each other.” But even in these reality-based poems, there is a nod to the idea of perception — like in “Tom Hanks Was Right,” where the narrator is found thinking about the past and what should have been said and then the narrator is talking to themselves in public. Haven’t we all caught ourselves doing that these COVID days?

Man on Terrace with Wine by Miles David Moore invites readers to be entertained, contemplative, and enjoy life as it comes. This collection is by turns witty and serious, but Moore continues to ask his readers to perceive reality in a way that not only brings joy but also satisfaction. Holding onto reality with a singular perspective can not only be boring, but also limiting.

Rating: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Miles David Moore is a Washington reporter for Crain Communications, Inc. He is founder and host of the Iota Poetry Reading Series in Arlington, VA, a member of the Board of Directors of The Word Works, Inc., and administrator of The Word Works Washington Prize. He is the author of three books of poetry: The Bears of Paris (The Word Works Capital Collection, 1995); Buddha Isn’t Laughing (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999); and Rollercoaster (The Word Works Capital Collection, 2004). With Karren LaLonde Alenier and Hilary Tham, he co-edited Winners: A Retrospective of the Washington Prize, published in 1999 by The Word Works. Fatslug Unbound, a CD of Moore’s poetry read by himself and 14 other poets, was realeased in 2000 by Minimus Productions. His review/essays on the poet John Haines have appeared in The Wilderness of Vision (Story Line Press, 1996) and A Gradual Twilight (CavanKerry Press, 2003).

Check out his appearance with Naomi Thiers and Jane Schapiro at Gaithersburg Book Festival:

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Warbler by Jane Schapiro

May 25, 2021 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 57 pgs.
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Warbler by Jane Schapiro is a poetic song of loss, a call to grief and acceptance and to memory. When we lose someone grief can take hold of us and keep us still, but the memories are what move us past the sorrow and into the light. Schapiro is well acquainted with this journey, and the light song of the warbler enables her to travel beyond the swirl of sadness.

Schapiro plays with poetic form in this collection, creating the shape of cracking porcelain as loss becomes a reality — fragmenting her lines and spacing them like so many shards on the floor — in “Porcelain of Loss.” In this poem, the narrator loses a friend, but the last words they speak are not understood because they must be translated from their native language, but it is not this moment that leaves the narrator shattered, it is the loss itself. The feeling of being unmoored continues in “Gravity,” as the narrator drifts titleless at the funeral — not a relative, not a spouse, not quite a friend because of the age difference — these are the feelings of those left behind. Loss and being lost at the same time. Change is incredibly difficult to handle, especially when it is irrevocable.

Erosion (pg. 49)

happens so slowly
    you don't notice
you're dozing
    earlier each night,
settling deeper
    into your chair.
Between now
    and your youth
a canyon
    has formed. From
above you
    see only tiers
switchbacks
    curving. Too tired
to hike
    (your knees the heat)
you scan postcards
    look for freshwater.

Warbler by Jane Schapiro is reflective of loved ones, of time’s passage, and of the gulf between where we began and where we are as we age and move through life. Her verse is beautiful and meditative, allowing the reader to take the journey with her narrators and experience the shock of unwelcome diagnoses and unexpected death.

RATING: Quatrain

Check out her appearance at Gaithersburg Book Festival with Miles Davis Moore and Naomi Thiers:

 

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley

May 20, 2021 by

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Hardcover, 88 pgs.
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Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley begins its exploration of American life with the poem, “Heirloom,” which conjures all kinds of sentiments in American thinking. It sets the stage for Beasley’s unraveling of culture taken for granted — the past passed down from one generation to the next (sometimes, it is scrubbed a little cleaner and the dark truth of it requires some digging). In these early poems, Beasley is uncovering the roots of her heritage, a father who was deployed and tries to connect with her but fails to see how she’s grown into a young woman in “Elephant.” He collects things from American icons in places of war, like Hard Rock t-shirts, while she strives to connect with him buying things at a Ranger Surplus store. Despite being family, there is a disconnect between them, they are blindly bumbling through the motions of connection. Isn’t this how many of us feel about our parents — those who have lived longer, different lives from us but have not spoken candidly of that life? A mystery to solve?

"The Conversation" (pg.10-2)
....

                 This
is how history claims us:
not in the gesture of one but
in the conversation of many,
the talk that gets the job done.
....

Without these interactions between ourselves and others that lead to action, aren’t we all forgotten as the present moves on without us? Our moments are so fleeting in the grander scheme of time and history. Beasley is picking through history and uncovering things she didn’t know, like a band in “Nostalgia” that had a name to honor Emmett Till, but spelled the name wrong. In her memory, she recalls the joy of their music, but they kept spelling the boy’s name wrong — this does not sit well.

Beasley’s examination of the past and culture expands to include monuments and figures from history, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. She speaks to his “benevolence” regarding his slaves but it is clear that “kindness” extended only so far. Each poem in the collection builds onto the next in a crescendo of unraveling histories, culture lost to a country burying it’s own truth, until a reckoning is all that can be left. She reminds us in “Einstein, Midnight” that “Anything, in the right hands, can be made to explode.”

The final poem echoes C.P. Cavafy’s “Ithaka,” in that Beasley’s journey will be and has been taken through the past, into the present but this journey is not over. Like life and its various moments, we are Made to Explode. Poke into the past and what you thought you knew about yourself and others will definitely be altered, but to blithely live one’s life without examining actions, reactions, past, and present is to have lived a hollow existence without growth, love, loss, and understanding. We cannot build conversation and change without it.

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Kim Addonizio, Katherine E. Young, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the virtual Gaithersburg Book Festival 2021:

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Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young

May 19, 2021 by

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Paperback, 72 pgs.
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Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young is a visceral collection that explores female sexuality through fantastical elements and realistic situations from a woman chained to a bear to a woman dealing with the phantom limb of heartbreak. Young has crafted an emotional roller coaster that is both visually unsettling in places and emotionally scathing. Readers will become voyeurs as the musician plays his muse in “Interval,” imagining the notes one body can play. But at other times, readers will be thrust into the comfort and pleasure of a balanced relationship and a oneness in “Euclidean Geometry.”

If There Is a Hell (pg. 27)

it resembles this street in shadow, this street
and this streetlamp, where you and I cling
Soul Food (pg. 44-45)

That first time when you hit me,
I marveled at the crack

your hand made as it struck
flat against my face.

I should have known right then:
we were headed straight

Young doesn’t just plunge readers into relationships in motion, but those that are over, on the side, breaking apart, and being observed from the outside (like “Calculus”). Nothing is taboo in this collection. In “Place of Peace,” Young reminds us “All my life’s been lived in shadow, pattern/pieced by someone else: daughter, mother//lover. Whore. …” and “So many battles are accidental.” (pg.49-55)

Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young leaves us with the question of what do you do when the wildness is within us? How do we let it free to feel the wholeness of ourselves without causing deep grief and a sense of loss? Is it all just illusory? Young leaves us with a bunch of existential questions, but her language will haunt us, causing us to return to her poems again and again.

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Kim Addonizio, Sandra Beasley, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the virtual Gaithersburg Book Festival 2021:

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Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio

May 13, 2021 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 96 pgs.
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Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is a collection that you can hold close in your shelter-in-place during the pandemic and know that anything that happens behind closed doors is just kalsarikdnnit, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t shut the world out and ignore our problems. Opening with “Night in the Castle,” the narrator has already given up on mercy long ago. The poet infuses this poem with injustice, privilege, and anger, recalling the clashing armies of history and the bleakness of regicide.

The poet is calling our attention to the darkness of humanity, from our clashes among ourselves and the destruction that results to the changing climate we’ve had a hand in expediting. “The earth is about used up/like a sodden tampon & no place to throw it away/” (pg. 14) and “Even the ocean is gasping for air/” (pg. 15), but these are things we already know, yet we are too complacent, too privileged to see that action is required. However, many of us feel as the narrator does in “In bed” that it is all to enormous to tackle head on or deal with daily, we’d rather just put our heads under the covers and ignore it all. We want a hibernation from the ugliness of the world.

But don’t assume that the collection is all doom and gloom, though the humor is a bit dark. My father would definitely appreciate her humor in Résumé:

Résumé 

Families shame you;
Rehab's a scam;
Lovers drain you
And don't give a damn.
Friends are distracted;
Aging stinks;
You'll soon be subtracted;
You might as well drink.

As a writer, I absolutely appreciated the third section of this collection – “Confessional Poetry” — in which writing is compared to “firing a nail gun into the center of a vanity mirror” (pg. 41) or “like sewing rhinestones on your traumas” and “wearing them” at a “pain festival” (pg. 42)

I really like feeling something when I stagger into a poem
& having a place to lie down & cry

Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is as much of an introspective emotional and existential journey as it is a confession that we are no where near perfect human beings. We all have a lot of work to do emotionally, spiritually, and philosophically, but as we struggle with these internal paradigms, we’re also watching the world suffer around us and degrade. How do we break through the malaise and paralysis to make progress with ourselves and the world? Perhaps by being less serious about everything, allowing ourselves to fall apart, and taking action that makes actual progress as opposed to the actions that people deem as “making progress.”

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Sandra Beasley, Katherine E. Young, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the 2021 Gaithersburg Book Festival:

Filed Under: challenges, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Little Wars by W. Luther Jett

May 11, 2021 by

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Paperback, 32 pgs.
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Little Wars by W. Luther Jett (full disclosure: we are in a poetry work-shopping group together) begins with “Recessional” a poem-like hymn in which a poet realizes that he works on a poem in night as many men before him have done and that they are all connected to one another in infinite time and space and that all of these poets are these poems. This poem sets up the rest of the collection’s theme of universality and how the little wars we wage with ourselves and others have come before and likely will continue, but for the hope that we can change and be more peaceful. The slivers of light, the blue of the sky, all of these images provide us the glimpse of hope on a distant horizon.

From "Storm Bear" (pg. 14)

...With great claws,
it scattered sand, wiped away the line
we'd drawn between desire
and circumstance. Roaring,
the storm fell upon us, ...

Wars can begin just like that; a tipping point of rage that wipes it all away, moving into the unchecked desire (for more power, for revenge, etc.). The trembling of these battles whether in the past or far from us still can be heard, if we listen close, like the narrator of “Poppies” — the reverberations remain — the consequences spiral out and are an influence on today, this moment. “We didn’t know there are no/little wars–no distance/we cannot reduce to nothing.//” (“Vanishing Point/Ach Du” pg. 17)

And “A War Story” explains just how we, ourselves, can be reduced to nothing by war — the war itself may seem large and incomprehensible, but the impact is very real, very personal. “Epitaph,” which follows it, is equally devastating in its truth about praising the dead as heroes when they would more than likely prefer to be alive and left unpraised for doing simple things you’d do normally without war at your doorstep.

Little Wars by W. Luther Jett reminds us of all the costs of war and that “we choose” to make them. What would happen if we chose another path? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

RATING: Cinquain

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Thresholds and Other Poems by Matt Hohner

April 28, 2021 by

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Paperback, 96 pgs.
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Threshold: the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.

Thresholds and Other Poems by Matt Hohner explores that threshold in depth, the line that must be crossed in order for the poems to transform or manifest into their fullest selves. The collection itself opens with a dream where “predators/creep into our life like doubt,” but rather than the doubt become a burden it is manifested into something wild that must be guarded against, even when it calls from the darkness. It is one of the poems in this collection I immediately saw myself inside. Hohner captures that “doubt” so well — it is carnivorous and it is sneaky.

The darkness of our modern world is at every threshold, even more present in “Kevin,” in which two brothers have turned the corner as shots ring out and kill another neighborhood boy. There are other poems in which the narrator tells us what we already know, like in “Gulf War Veteran,” that the darkness has won many battles around us and there is no coming back.

Hohner pulls no punches in his poems; we are not allowed to turn away from the horror of 9/11 where Americans are “pelting the concrete like hail” in “Terror in the Dust” or in “Dundalk” where children come to school high on their parents pills. But even in these dark times, his verse bends toward nature’s calming hand, with “the first yellow leaves of autumn” signifying a softer fall for those 9/11 Americans or the children’s veins still pumping and “singing in joy at dawn for the promise of another day.”

Each poem is unrelenting in its exploration of the threshold — how much can we take before breaking, how much can we take before we learn to let go and forgive, how much can we take? The answer is often far more than we believe we can. It would seem why the darkness continues to push us, pressure us, test us. Thresholds and Other Poems by Matt Hohner reach “across time and space” just as the narrator does in “As I Think of You in Italy,” teaching us that thresholds must be crossed to get to the place we long to be and we can do that with an openness to love, grace, and forgiveness.

Rating: Quatrain

Photo credit: Shannon Kline

About the Poet:

Matt Hohner, a Baltimore native, has been a finalist for the Moth International Poetry Prize and taken both third and first prizes in the Maryland Writers Association Poetry Prize. He won the 2016 Oberon Poetry Prize, the 2018 Sport Literate Anything but Baseball Poetry Prize, and most recently the 2019 Doolin Writers’ Weekend Poetry Prize in Ireland. Hohner’s work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. An editor for Loch Raven Review, Hohner’s book Thresholds and Other Poems, his first full-length book, was published by Apprentice House Press in Fall 2018. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Hohner has held a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, made possible by a grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Hohner was recently longlisted for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and the Live Canon 2019 Poetry Contest in the UK. Hohner has had recent work published or forthcoming in Bhubaneswar Review, Boyne Berries, The American Journal of Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Bangor Literary Journal, and elsewhere. His second collection of poetry will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2022. Visit his webpage and on Twitter.

Filed Under: challenges, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Everyone Disappears by W. Luther Jett

April 20, 2021 by

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Paperback, 32 pgs.
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Everyone Disappears by W. Luther Jett (full disclosure I am in a poetry work shopping group with Luther), published by Finishing Line Press, is a follow-up to Jett’s previous chapbook, Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father.

The opening poem, “Nepenthe,” refers to the drug that banishes grief or trouble from one’s mind as mentioned in the Odyssey (yes, I looked this up). Our narrator runs through the poem, looking for those memories in every room, rifles through drawers, unseals books — trying to uncover who did die of starvation, but he has forgotten. This opening poem sets the tone for the collection. It is the search for memory, even the most painful and a wish to hold those tight to almost make the lost corporeal again.

In "Why the Ocean Tastes of Tears"

....
    The snow melts slowly.
Everyone disappears.
    when you want them to stay
everyone goes somewhere
    else and that is why
      the ocean tastes of tears.
It's the one thing you can count on
    when you close your eyes --
      you dream and if
anyone is still there when you wake
  you've witnessed a revolution.

We all cry oceans of tears for lost parents, siblings, friends, children, and that salt is bitter and if often taints our ability to see the joy in what we’ve had. But what a revelation it would be to bring them back to life, even for a moment. “There is no returning,/yet we are always looking back/” says the narrator in “Days Like This.”

There are so many somber poems in this collection — ghost towns of bones, a brother gone too soon, a mother crying, and others — but “Remembrance” is the saddest poem, yet with a sense of humor. It begins, “This is the suit/I only wear once a year.” But you know by the end, a memory will surface where this truth is no longer true and it will break your heart.

Everyone Disappears by W. Luther Jett explores the saddest of truths with a sensitive hand and deep emotional root. His lines will lull you into a trance and gut you when you don’t expect it. But there is a hope, a “star’s kiss” that pierces through that dark shroud, and we shall not forget it.

RATING: Cinquain

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En Route by Jesse Wolfe

April 15, 2021 by

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I’ve been reading a lot of poetry collections about life journeys this month, and En Route by Jesse Wolfe is no exception. Wolfe’s poems have narrators who are “en route” to somewhere or are about to embark on the next leg of their journey. The collection moves from part one in which narrators are alone to those who are accompanied to those who have almost arrived. Like in the opening poem, “Cumulus,” we are reminded that we may consider any point in our lives a beginning, but there is history behind us that heaps up, making us the well-rounded human beings we are. We shouldn’t forget the past.

From "Cumulus"

At a certain arbitrary point
you have to say, here is a beginning
(not to pretend that nothing lingers,
that the trek across the bridge was a mirage,
or the nights sleeping on abandoned farms,
accepting bread and water from strangers).

“Polliwog Park” is one of the most heartbreaking poems in the collection, with fly balls and baseball diamonds, sunburns peeling away just as a father drives off into his own “separate story.” There are moments of “cleaving” in many of these poems, but Wolfe’s poems embrace that separation, internalizing the heartbreak and using it as a tool to see beyond that momentary end to the journey ahead. Like from “Breakup,” “Or I could turn to our love that never coalesced:/you’re half an abstraction, an empty space/into which I pour my fatigue, distress,/and inchoate faith — my shameful escape/from futures withdrawing all promise of home.//”

Although these poems speak to the “will” of the narrator to move forward from heartbreak and endings, there is also the sense that life’s “momentum” cannot be controlled, like in the poem of the same name.

En Route by Jesse Wolfe’s “Homework” reminds us that “There is work I can only do/by letting go: my hands off the wheel,/the car will find its own way/down the long freeway./ … toward whatever … inarticulate – need.”

RATING: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Jesse Wolfe’s poetry has appeared in publications including Tower Journal, Good Works Review, Mad Swirl, and Eunoia Review. An English professor at California State University, Stanislaus, Wolfe previously served as Faculty Advisor to Penumbra, the campus’s student-run literary and art journal. His scholarly work includes the monograph Bloomsbury, Modernism, and the Reinvention of Intimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and a forthcoming book on intimacy in contemporary British and American fiction.

Filed Under: challenges, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Whirl Away Girl by Tricia Johnson

April 14, 2021 by

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Paperback, 120 pgs.
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We all identify as our role in the family (mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, cousin, etc.) and we all identify ourselves with our employment (teacher, firefighter, poet, scientist, etc.), but what happens when those aspects of our lives can no longer anchor us — hold us steady? We begin to spiral away, to lose our sense of self, and this is exactly what is explored in Whirl Away Girl by Tricia Johnson. These poems express the deep harm, anger, frustration, and sadness patients with chronic illness can feel — nothing is in their control, leaving them unmoored.

from "Fatigue" (pg. 3)

You are rising in a car and its weight slides in
and down your body
Your hands too heavy to knit
Your head too heavy to raise and no words or thoughts exist

From the first poem, readers will know that they are in for a rough journey with the narrator. Many of these poems will be tough to read back to back, but that’s the point. Someone with chronic illness (like lupus or others) doesn’t get a break. It is okay if you take a break and read this volume in spurts, and it may help to generate greater empathy for the narrator — to sit and think about what she’s telling us life has been like. From the feeling of being beaten down by disease to the condescension of some medical doctors, the narrator demonstrates not only the weight of a breaking down body, but also the weight of the broken medical system and the additional burden it becomes for those who need it most. “When added together become a 10-ton hammer” (“New Doctor”).

 from "A Disillusional Song" (pg. 55)
...
My thoughts are as tangled as the bedding
Woven between my legs
I am antsy, walking, driven
Flopping back in bed, up again
...
I am a stranger caught in a mind, that is caught in itself

Whirl Away Girl by Tricia Johnson is a candid account of being out of control when chronic illness hits and there are few answers about how to improve the situation. Johnson’s poems illustrate the fear that accompanies chronic illness and the sense of loss of one’s self throughout the process. “Battle of You” is probably one of the strongest poems in this collection, but I’ll let you find that gem for yourself. As the collection progresses, the narrator does regain a sense of self and strength, found in the moments of good days and few symptoms. There is joy to be found there, even if it is fleeting.

RATING: Quatrain

Filed Under: challenges, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,