Grief, Memory, and Language: A Review of Victoria Chang’s OBIT
Victoria Chang’s collection, Obit, seems to have anticipated the prolonged good-byes of 2020. In it, Chang says good-bye to loved ones, feelings, objects—everything we feel and know, who we were and where we’re heading—especially when someone we love is dying, and our sense of awareness is heightened.
The Social Virtues Series
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What Comes Alive Through Death: A Review of Jill Bialosky’s Collection ASYLUM
This stunning book-length poem, broken up into 103 sections, examines the grief and trauma associated with losing a young sister from suicide. Threaded also through these lyrics is a conversation with Paul Celan’s Selected Poems and Dante’s Inferno.
Three Poems
The shoemaker labors over his leather, his work./A singular lightbulb illuminates his hands, like a ner tamid,
Three Poems
Hallmark does not make a card for this/for what we mean to each other,/for what we do when my kids are asleep./We are not married. Not husband and wife.
Two Poems
The table we ate at is bare. Hours ago our fast broken / sunset & cannon-strike with apricot paste & Kingdom dates.
Two Poems
Body broken into. All the sweetness / out. Brightly dyed paper flakes / linger in the grass as if someone has / down the sun. The husk of
Artifacts Worth Saving
The night before Elsa left, she and her husband, Landon, discussed the difference between azure and powder blue. Decisions had to be finalized before she left to do archaeological field work in Italy: shaker style or beadboard cabinets, solid surface or subway tile countertop.
Regrets
So many of my adult friends / have filed complaints against their fathers, / thick dossiers residing inside heavy metal cabinets / marked D for disappointment—
A Girl Walks into a Bar
A girl walks into a diner but she wishes it was a bar. A girl walks into a diner for breakfast. A blinking red light in the window says “Eat Good Food.”
Review of SAUL STORIES by Elizabeth Ellen
This is a tough book to review, because it takes a disparaging tone from the get-go towards the traditional ways people try to identify with narratives and interpret them. After quoting an agent who wrote to Elizabeth Ellen that they couldn’t determine the collection’s stakes, the dust jacket adds, “Saul Stories, in the spirit of films such as Gummo and Trash Humpers, has no obvious stakes.”
Two Poems
Some mornings at my office in Midtown, / post-9/11, shopping bags appeared / on my desk. In them, four-inch Louboutins, / a vintage bomber, Japanese stationary,
Review of POEMS IN THE MANNER OF… by David Lehman
David Lehman’s new book, Poems in the Manner Of … is a waltz through the history of poetry and a self-portrait in the fun house mirrors of style. “In the manner of” here means sound-alikes, inspired-bys, collages, fresh translations, and other deep visits with a poet, or a poetic age.