Source: the poet

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Chaos Theories by Elizabeth Hazen is a collection of poems that explore the spiraling, out-of-control nature our lives can sometimes take on and how to cope with that chaos and uncertainty. It’s a collection for the current times in that it provides us with a look at life amidst uncertainty, albeit unrelated to COVID-19. Through the art of words and the certainty of science, Hazen strikes into new frontiers with her poems, exploring divorce, motherhood, the turbulent nature of emotions. In “Chaos Theory,” Hazen establishes the unstable ground of these poems by grounding it into a personal moment of “rage [that] comes out of nowhere — the glass explodes/when it hits the wall, as physics says it must,//” (pg. 3)

Ghosts haunt in “Ghost Story” but are they just voices in the narrator’s head spilling her secrets? But the secrets won’t stop just because there are three or four fingers of warm liquid in the glass. Hazen calls us to face our own ghosts head on, not to dull the sharpness of their criticisms or their secrets. To understand the chaos, we must all start from the beginning. “…and no matter what you tell/yourself tonight, no matter what you tell//yourself in twenty years, you are still there,/” (pg. 10, from “Girls at the Bus Depot”)

Hazen’s poems are like an archeological dig, an excavation of the self. In “Extraction,” the narrator says, “…A body holds more mysteries/than the mouth can bring itself to speak./” It’s true that when we’re young and sometimes as we age, we don’t really know our true selves, unless we’ve taken that time to delve deep into who we are, what our desires may be, and what we’re passionate about. It is a journey we must take on our own, but also one that must be done. Without it, we can be lost and make many harmful and wrong decisions.

There are many losses along the way in our journeys, as we search for the truth of ourselves, but those losses are memories that can be recalled with the slightest scent or picture. “or a room holds the vibration of a voice,/a person’s scent, long after he has gone.” (pg. 43, “The Spectroscope”) While loss can be sad and make us feel empty, there are those losses that can bring joy at the happiness some moments held, like uncovering trilobites in the soil.

Chaos Theories by Elizabeth Hazen warns us not to get too caught up in the loss and the memories — “My memory is a haunted house that will/not let me leave.” (pg. 44, “When I Was a Girl”) We must learn to break free from the chaos — sometimes self-created — to find the right path, the calm, and the joy we all seek. At the heart, we’re all working against nature and the passage of time, like the house in “Erosion.”

RATING: Quatrain

Other Reviews:

• Girls Like Us

About the Poet:

Elizabeth Hazen is a poet, essayist, and teacher. A Maryland native, she came of age in a suburb of Washington, D.C. in the pre-internet, grunge-tinted 1990s, when women were riding the third wave of feminism and fighting the accompanying backlash. She began writing poems when she was in middle school, after a kind-hearted librarian handed her Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind. She has been reading and writing poems ever since.

Hazen’s work explores issues of addiction, mental health, and sexual trauma, as well as the restorative power of love and forgiveness. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, American Literary Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, The Normal School, and other journals. Alan Squire Publishing released her first book, Chaos Theories, in 2016. Girls Like Us is her second collection. She lives in Baltimore with her family.