Source: the Poet
Paperback, 100 pgs.
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Her Whole Bright Life by Courtney LeBlanc is a collection of rolling grief and healing. In the opening poem, “Self-Portrait,” the narrator speaks to the collections of past memories that are part of her being and how they make her feel about herself, but by the end, the living in the moment and in the past, have left her without a sense of who she wishes to be in the future. There’s an unsettled-ness in this poem that sets the tone for the rest of the collection and the roiling emotions that come through each subsequent poem.
In “I Don’t Understand Black Holes No Matter How Many Times Cody Explains Them to Me,” the poet speaks to the immense and unexplainable black hole, noting “For now, I’ll just accept/that black holes exist, that they are closer/than we previously thought, and that they/are a force so powerful, every mistake I ever/made would be swallowed by them.//” Her regrets seem large and able to swallow her hole, which explains why she sees black holes as a potential force that can make those regrets disappear.
Grief takes many forms in this collection. It is not just the slow loss of a vibrant father who dedicated himself to farming and gardening and his daughter, but it’s also the slow losses we don’t see until we lose a parent. We are no longer those children we were, life has shaped us. We’ve become someone else and yet still carry that younger self with us and long for what we see as a simpler existence without regret and loss.
From "Snails and Stars" (pg. 41) ... Last year, a friend took a bottle of pills and went to sleep. At his memorial we watched the slideshow, his smiling face in every frame, the galaxy of his friends spilling onto the lawn. We are a constellation of caring, but we were not enough to save him. ...
Her Whole Bright Life by Courtney LeBlanc is somber and full of life — its funny moments, its sad emotions and grief, and its unexpected gifts. LeBlanc is fast becoming one of my favorite poets. Her turn of phrase, her bravery in the face of deep emotional turmoil, and her ability to connect seemingly unconnected events into a poem that you can find your own story inside. Don’t miss this collection.
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About the Poet:
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections, “Her Whole Bright Life” (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, Write Bloody, 2023), “Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart” (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and “Beautiful & Full of Monsters” (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). She is a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow (2022) and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos and a soy latte each morning.
