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.
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| 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.
