Poetry Micro-Reviews
Poetry should make you feel. And a poetry review should let you in on the experience. I write standard reviews for other outlets. In this post, I list of poetry collections (Full and Chapbook Length) that I enjoyed recently but provide all in mini-sized (less than 100 words) glimpses. This is only the start. I’ll continue to update this periodically.
The Size of Your Joy: Elise Powers
Powers takes us on a wild ride towards accessing joy by owning our attention. From smothering under the weight of expectations and grief, through digging a tap root into the strength of anger, and, along with her rise into motherhood, using that witches brew of anger and nurturing to give wings to her joy. It becomes our joy. I also think there’s an element of Hemingway in this book. She shows the double dirty Zellenials had done to them- first the biting stress of the financial meltdowns of the late aughts and then the hustle culture jive of the 20teens.
Standing In a Forest of Being Alive: Katie Ferris
This is a true memoir in verse. Farris conquers the identity stripping aspect of a serious diagnosis by doubling down on her poetry. She offers a respite from the brutality of the world and understands how, because of the isolation of treatment, books become a life line during cancer (or any other serious illness). She reflects this by spiking the collection with tiny moments of beauty and shelter. This isn't a standard toxic positivity collection of two-cent contemplations on hope and strength. It is an instruction manual on how to survive the day to day.
This is the collection of poetry/prose you need if you happen to have a chronic illness and are moving across the country while also figuring out a new career and your uncle dies. Lyndsay Rush (the Instagram poet known as @maryoliversdrunkcousin). I felt so fully in the universe she builds, that it was as if I'd stepped away from my own brand of chaos. Rush writes that she intended to create a collection sorted by "mood and emotion so that you can always find what you need, when you need it...." She delivers on that promise.
A perfect collection of poems on the depth of love, the magic of what a dog companion adds to our lives. The illustrations are gently beautiful as well. The whole piece seems like a cute little conversation book, but it really serves the place of poetry: finding and showing facets of the beauty in our little lives. A great place to start seeing how reading poetry from time to time can add an extra layer to our experience of the world.
This collection is perfect for savoring in small pieces. Suess questions the edges of poetry in this collection through references to songs and other art. She has some incredible slights of hand in this collection too, including really deft associational logic that creates odd little worlds. Aside from being an excellent collection, I enjoyed this as a historical look at NYC in the gritty early 1980s and the reverence she has for friends lost to AIDs. She also digs into the tenuous place of parenting a child with addiction when the parent has their own mental health issues.
Instructions for Traveling West: Joy Sullivan
This book feels. It is a conversation with an old friend from out of town- warm, generous, funny, and fresh. The book is formatted in sections that move from upending the safety and sentimentality of society's agreed on shape of success to something more specific, etching a more personal way of encountering emotion. Sullivan explores universal internal conflicts, of leaving lovers, of driving towards a place hoping for it to connect you with reality, but her exploration acts as if she breadcrumbed a path out of the woods.
