POETRY REVIEWS: Captive

Captive by Madeline Dyer is a volume of poetry produced from her therapy writings as she worked through OCD and psychosis induced by Autoimmune Basal Ganglia Encephalitis. As the title suggests, this disorder causes brain inflammation, and this book circles on her feelings and experiences during this time.

Thematically, we see several clear messages regarding disability and mental/physical disorders arise. Often, frustration and helplessness come not only from Dyer’s illness, but also as a response to the way she is treated by various individuals in the medical profession, as her condition forces her to go to the, repeatedly for help. Instead of getting help, she is dismissed, refused tests, and made to feel that she is just seeking attention. In that way, this volume of poetry is very timely, as there have been a number of studies coming out on how women are not believed by doctors in their pain.

Although her experiences are specific to her life and having a disorder that is very rare, people who struggle with chronic conditions will be able to relate to a lot of elements exhibited here. As Dyer crafts her poems, she blurs the lines between metaphor, hallucination, and literal occurrence, taking the reader with her as she relies on natural imagery, but then describes actual hallucinations. As she discusses her illness, the ever-shifting relationship between her and it unfolds: at once a monster, a captor, a tormentor, a friend, and sometimes, an object that she diminishes into a humorous image (a dancing beetle) to take control over it. She describes it as the one that whispers to her how to be safe, will never let her to be free, and lies to her that it is her only friend.

There is also a sense of claustrophobia created by the poems when read together. Dealing with mental illness, whether induced by a physical cause or not, can be incredibly isolating. Whether it is due to your loved ones growing tired of your needing help, or you pushing others away, doesn’t really matter. In the end, part and parcel with all of this is feeling very alone with your illness.

It’s easier to process this volume as a whole rather than a selection of poems, but I’ll mention a few that particularly resonated with me.

“Things People Say/Things I Want to Say”

Again, I think it helps to read this volume in one go, but if you have to take a break, make sure to read these two together. They reflect how people talk to those with mental illness and things Dyer is struggling to communicate.

“but my tears feed it [the monster]

and my breaths

are the beat of its wings”

“Men in White Coats”

One of several poem detailing her complex relationship with doctors and the fear that’s been inspired by hospitals.

“I’ll run away,

don’t make me go

to a prison too white

with screams as loud as silence

and whispers that cut.”

“There’s Nothing Wrong with You”

In this poem, I recognized the feeling of going to a doctor, and having that doctor shocked when I cried that my results showed nothing. Anyone with chronic problems knows that a negative test is good for what they tested for, but you are still sick and still in pain, and something is wrong. They just haven’t found it. And when you spend a huge amount of money for tests that find nothing? Hello. I’m gonna cry.

“I see my soul, pink, inflamed, fleshy,

reduced to a watery, flat nothing

in the doctor’s hands.

Hands that are supposed to care

but his hands are callous because his mind

is set and he’s not willing to believe me

and research my symptoms to save me.”

“The Beetle from My Mind”

“Little legs and little arms.

A briefcase, glossy shoes, and a top hat.

A monocle, because he thinks it looks so cool.”

Personifying her psychosis as this little beetle that she dresses up and tells to dance, owning the space of her mind. It’s just such a great concept, and I think others who deal with mental illness and disorders can definitely relate to visualizations that help them cope with the bullshit their brains are trying to pull.

“My Hands”

There’s an element of body horror to not recognizing parts of yourself and feeling vulnerable and unable to be an actor in your own life. That’s what struck me about this one. When the monster is most in control “a parasite, reaching with long, sweet limbs.. he pulls the levers and my fingers obey.” This really pulls the reader into the terrifying feeling of losing of control.

“Psycho”

Losing connection with your friends through the process of trying to keep your head above water during an illness like this… It’s just crushing. It emphasizes the sense of isolation because it isn’t all at once. The longer it’s dragged out, the more painful it is.

“But the wasp thrives after leaving its poison,

and I am wasteland, watching friends evaporate,

lost in the grid.”

Honorable mention: I just like “An Apology to the Ponies.” Dyer has Shetland ponies. I liked this one.

I will say, in the beginning, I had some difficulty parsing the meaning of the poems as they were.  I think that this could’ve been resolved for the reader by putting “Sometimes, I Get Really Good Days“ first to make it easier to ease into the volume and follow Dyer’s poems. At the same time, I sort of value the struggle to find meaning in an experience that is so different from my own. For me, with anxiety and depression and chronic pain, a lot of my issues don’t even come close to Dyer’s, and cognitively putting in the work to understand her words is very important. By the end, I thought, “Oh no, it’s over.”

And you know that makes a powerful volume of poetry. I definitely recommend giving it a try.

I received a copy of this ebook for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

POETRY REVIEWS: You Can't Kill Me Twice

 

Charlyne Yi: Dark haired woman with winged eyeliner
and silver fish pinning her black cloak together.

Every time I see Charlyne Yi in something, I’m always surprised and then delighted. I’m pretty sure I saw her for the first time in Knocked Up, which I didn’t particularly enjoy despite a general good job all around by the actors, but I knew her best for Ruby in Steven Universe. Then, later, she voiced the lead in Next Gen (so cute) and played Lucifer’s nerdy little sister Death/Azrael (seen above, with Death’s fishies). And that’s just the acting side of things, because she’s also a comedian (which I knew) and a composer/musician/artist/writer/director (which I did not know). And then I saw her book come up on Netgalley.

I wouldn’t call this your standard book of poems, although as a musician, Yi can wield a metaphor adeptly. I might rate the book lower, if compared side to side with some of my absolute favorite poets who have left me gasping. You Can’t Kill Me Twice (so please treat me right) isn’t just another chapbook, though. It’s a set of musings, art, and stories. And like the best of all of these, it grows deeply personal.

One thing that Yi does that I’ve not actually seen other poets really do is integrate her illustrations into the meaning of the expression on the page. Yes, you’ll see some interesting pictures here and there in Rupi Kaur and others, but they aren’t critical to the poetry. You can just read the poem and get it. “The Study of Types of Love of Friendship, Family, and Romance” lists types like “The Black Hole” and “The Projectionist” and “The Disassemblist.”

Figure with body parts spread before them, saying
"You're so facinating. How do you work?"

Just making a list without the illustrations wouldn’t give us same effect. Later in the book, in between a few lines of a short poem, Yi deploys her illustrations as well as the space of different pages to have a couple dancing and pulling each other back and forth. One of my favorites is the of image those enormous glasses the optometrist gives you, to look between lenses for which one looks right, and Yi punctuates each with a little circular lens with a drawing: Repression, Depression, and Reality. (I like the little ghost, okay.)

Apart from that, there are volumes of poetry that make me laugh, but reading this, there were a lot of little moments of saying “YES!” and outright snorting in laughter. Yi’s ability to move fluidly between roles makes for volume of poetry and art that is ever changing and doesn’t let you settle. It was a quick read, yes, but very enjoyable.  Her humor is also a moving target. Sometimes it’s a bitter laugh, and sometimes it’s about an egg going up someone’s butt.

Thematically, Yi does address romantic relationships to a degree, but this is by far not the only focus. It’s hard to pin it all down, but You Can’t Kill Me Twice addresses love, loneliness, mental illness, suicide, identity, racism, political violence and scapegoating, building society on empathy rather than aggression, and the cyclical nature of abuse.

It’s a lot, ya’ll.

At the same time, it’s nice to see books of poetry that don’t just revolve around the rise and fall of a person’s relationships. It’s there, definitely, and I appreciate the themes of needing to be a whole person without your significant other, but that isn’t the beginning and end of what you’ll see here. The book is an interesting ride.

Check out Charlyne Yi on Twitter

Charlyne Yi's Webpage

I was given a free copy in exchange for an honest review by Netgalley.

(I also wasn't going to do another poetry review so soon, but the pdf goes boom on the 19th when Yi's book goes on sale, so I had to hurry while I had the time.)

POETRY REVIEWS: Swallowtail

Image of a butterfly with a clipped wing.
Text: "Swallowtail: Poems, Brenna Twohy"

Swallowtail is a short, potent volume of poetry by Brenna Twohy, who comes out of the scene in Portland, Oregon and is finishing law school. An overall strong debut, Twohy's poetry is like a bracing, but refreshing, step into the first winter air. I wasn't expecting it, but god, does it feel good.

Twohy's spoken poetry influences are apparent in her work. The utilization of humor, the pop culture to broach difficult topics, the boldness of those topics. You can hear the lyricism and rhythm as you read through. Twohy also employs some familiar forms to slam poetry, for example, numbered lists and prompts with descending word count. This influence proves a strength for Twohy, who is capable of balancing strikig prose and meaning with the style/gimmicks employed. Furthermore, in her few shorter poems, she is able to deliver the depth of a single thought via a thought provokig extended metaphor.

Swallowtail starts strong. Rather than following the current trends, and parcelling out development in a 3-4 part "journey" (a conceit that usually leaves the front rather weak), Twohy comes out swinging with several poems about rape and abuse. One poem even calls out the complaint that there are too many poems about rape, without recognizing why this is such a common experience.

"Another Rape Poem"

You are staring out at a world on fire complaining about how ugly you think the ashes are.

By placing these poems upfront, Twohy captures our attention and signals to the reader the kind of poet she aspires to be: willing to take risks and very much having something to say. While this volume doesn't have a central theme, the content circles rather closely on relationships and violence, grief and loss, and perception of self/others' perceptions of that self. Whether by intention or by the natural organization, the volume ends with the consequences of the poems before, which include anxiety, depression, and the examination of personal failures as a result of previous emotional abuse.

"In Which I Do Not Fear Harvey Dent"

If you think I am brave, it is because you have never seenme out of costume.

Possibly, Twohy's lawyerly aspirations are what add the extra force to her poetry. Perhaps, it is just the overlap between her experience and her writerly voice. Whatever it is, Swallowtail is a strong, refreshing debut that will leave lyricism singing in your blood, the way it does when you go to a good open mic night.

Twohy's Tumblr
Twohy's Twitter
Twohy's Website


I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

POETRY REVIEWS: Amanda Lovelace's Witch

The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One, Amanda Lovelace’s second volume of poetry, is ambitious in concept. Like her first volume, The Princess Saves Herself in This One, Lovelace’s style lends itself to a multi-section chapbook of freeform poetry, and like that first volume, many of the poems are so simple as to say almost nothing. The strengths from The Princess—personal, detailed pain transliterated into poetry—are mostly absent in The Witch, leaving it to stand on the emotional residue of current political unrest.

One reason that this structure worked for her first volume is simply that we were following Lovelace through her own journey. It was powerful for its personal nature. This is a similar structure to what you would find from Rupi Kaur, but with extreme simplicity of form for each poem. That in itself isn’t a criticism. Part of Lovelace’s appeal is her readability for those just getting into poetry. The problem lies in the fact that many of her poems sound the same, have the same point, with little variation. Her experiments with text spacing and font changes don’t always add something to what she’s writing, either. So when the narrative of the volume is absent, as it is with The Witch, and the topic of each poem is vaguely political rather than personal, each poem loses more and more impact. It gives the reader the feeling that they’re scrolling through the poetry tag on Tumblr, rather than reading a volume of poetry they bought for $15.

Furthermore, as I mentioned before, the poetry is rather one-note. For the first section, I only marked two poems as standing out. The middle sections faired a bit better, but since most of the topics were either a vague “women are powerful” or a rehash of what Lovelace did in the first volume, it is difficult really to find a lot of good poems to pull out as examples. Additionally, she made several “homages” to other literary works, from The Handmaid’s Tale to The Hunger Games to Hamilton to “Goblin Market”—something that should improve the quality of her poetry… However for the most part, the allusions are superficial. I would ask Lovelace, how are you building on the themes here? How does their inspiration bring strength to your own work?

A few themes appeared in The Witch that were notable. One is the encouragement of women to write poetry and draw from the strength of poets who came before them. This theme would have been strengthened if Lovelace had demonstrated any knowledge of this history beyond mentioning “Goblin Market,” since the poem itself only had a connection of women eating fruit and didn’t develop thematically to explore the meaning behind eating that fruit. Especially given the running theme of fire and witchcraft, there could be endless material for building on women poets who have come before Lovelace. That she doesn’t feels like an omission.

Another theme, which actually turns out well for Lovelace, is her attempt to draw on the notion of sisterhood. Overall, Lovelace’s portrayal of feminism here is a bit reminiscent of the second wave Sisterhood is Powerful bit and tries to totalize women’s experiences, but in several poems she directly addresses the broad spectrum of women and asking that women work together and for one another, particularly for their sisters on the margins. This brings out two poems from one of the stronger sections, The Firestorm, “your sisters are not your enemies” and “witch girl gang”, and one from The Ashes, “there’s plenty of room for all of us.” The latter is one instance in which her use of typography strengthens the reading of the poem on the paper.

Visual of Lovelace's poems: Left, regular poetry with one line dangling; Right, a poem in the shape of a torch.

The continued reference to fire and witches in effect is more of a motif, and it is disappointing that this wasn’t exploited further. However, in some poems, these elements really come together in a way that resonates and elevates. My favorite of these would be “call me alexandria,” for which the subject is the dismissal of women as unknowable, and the allusion is of course the historical burning of the library of Alexandria. Fire, feminism, violence, and poetry, all in one.

From the themes addressed in her first volume, The Witch follows up with a few regarding body positivity and sexual violence that are worth the time. For few examples, “my body rejects your desires” and “rip to the women who lost these games.” These seem to be Lovelace’s strength. These poems, along with the fighting spirit, however repetitive, will make The Witch another favorite for her fans. In fact, I’d say that if you have a young woman in your life who is just getting into poetry, who may just be getting into social justice and feminism, they will enjoy The Witch, even with all of the missed opportunities for Lovelace to elevate her style, references, and truly produce a powerful collection of poetry.

Ultimately, any review of Amanda Lovelace will have to be bittersweet. There’s so much promise. So much ability for her to lead young readers into deeper and more complex poetry with her bare and easily digestible style. And still, I know that as is, The Witch will probably outsell most collections coming out this year and older ones that young people could explore. Thus, I hope with its target demographic The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One will put a fire under its readers and have them thinking more deeply about the political implications that are so relevant to their lives, now more than ever.

I received a copy of the ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Year in Books: March

Behold, I read. Since the beginning of the year, mostly thanks to my freakish friend who reads approximately three books a week, I've been trying to make myself do more reading. FOR FUN.

On the left are the books that I've read so far: Good Omens, Milk and Honey, True Porn Clerk Tales, The Princess Saves Herself in This One, Blockbuster Plots, and Night Sky With Exit Wounds. (Not pictured: 1984, Affinity, and Howl's Moving Castle)

On the Right (under Harley Quinn): Hope in the Dark, Six of Crows, and Bone.

I've been reading a lot of poetry, and it makes me intensely happy. Some Tweet-poetry, some free verse, some experimental. Something about it speaks to the creature inside me, and it makes me want to write more and read more. It's a kind of self-care I've neglected for the past few years because it's always felt as though I needed to be doing something serious or important. And it's caused me to pick my own poems back up for editing, and write at least five new ones.

I really loved Milk and Honey. I just sit and reread. There was no point of flagging which pages I liked the best. I loved The Princess Saves Herself in This One, but I look forward to her next volume because this work feels very raw and fresh, and Lovelace should be quite amazing once she's matured as a poet. Night Sky with Exit Wounds I liked, but I am struggling with some of the poems and will be able to say more after I take the time to reread. 

I have to say, of all the books I've read this year, I was blown away by Howl's Moving Castle. I loved the movie, but the book is so, so much more. It's a fairytale, but not an old one. It's female led, and beautiful and weird, and dark in ways.

Since I'll be going out of town next week (and getting to see my girlfriend <3), I'm hoping to get Six of Crows finished on the plane, or sooner.

Uneducating Queer

Confessions of an Uneducated Queer
by Lauren Zuniga (trigger warnings)

"Everything I learned about being queer, I learned from poets.

Poets are cheaper than college."

Zuniga starts by talking about not understanding Judith Butler and mispronouncing Foucault at a party... It took me about seven years to really understand Judith Butler while I was reading her. I read Gender Trouble at least three times, and it wasn't until I'd spent a lot of time reading the French theorists that Butler is basing her work off of that I came back to GT and amazingly, shockingly, alarmingly, GOT IT. I pretty thrilled when I turned in a summary of Butler and got high praise for having such a good grasp on what Butler was saying, and being able to condense it so well. What a rainbow feather in my cap! Oh, I got the ideas long before because you can't hang around gender studies without absorbing the general idea, and even better, the trans theorists who critique her do a better job of breaking her down.

(FYI, Butler's early works are so difficult because 1) They were meant to be that way. Theorists sometimes torture language that way to help disassociate from meaning, and 2) She was working through these concepts as she was writing them. And as a teacher of writing, I'll tell you, that's when your prose falls apart. Read Butler's more current work and it's a lot more easy to parse.)

(Here, have a link of Judith Butler as explained by cats.)

But honestly, academic queerness isn't the only way to be queer. Queer studies exist to break down culture and concepts and study them. It's not supposed to be a way of shaming people. And as Zuniga points out here, it's not the only way to learn about queerness. The community is the best way, and reading is another way, both memoirs and fiction. Listening to other people.

My first experiences with LGBTQ characters: Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage series.  

A series. About wizards. With talking horses. And gay people.

(Yay!)

Through multiple moves, and selling of my stuff to pay car repair bills and medical bills, and my ceiling literally caving in with water, I still have that damn book. I didn't come out until I was 19, and I couldn't conceptualize it really until then. I lived in a very small town growing up. That town still doesn't have a single Starbucks. It was a big deal when we got a Walmart. For a while, every time I thought about it, I pushed the identity aside. It didn't seem to fit. I couldn't wrap my head around that and me.

There were no gay characters on television, aside from evil lesbians on DS9. The only reason I was exposed to LGBTQ characters, the only reason I saw someone representing it as normal, even as a trait that heroes might have, was because of books. 

And I was a voracious reader.

It's so important. Our communities, and our literature. Our creations. We teach and change through the common channels, the ones that don't have pre-requisites.