Amy Woolard鈥檚听Neck of the Woods
Reviewed by Mary Ardery
While Amy Woolard delights with wordplay in听Neck of the Woods听(Alice James Books, 2020), this is first and foremost a book of substance. There is something lurking in these poems of the American South, especially a history of violence.
One of the defining features of the book and Woolard鈥檚 idiom is that things aren鈥檛 what they seem. She makes frequent use of familiar phrases, slightly altered. In 鈥淭he Blueprint,鈥� there is an echo of the Big Bad Wolf when the walls of a house are all 鈥渢he better to lose yourself again // My dear.鈥� In 鈥淕et Lost,鈥� there is an echo of fellow Southerner Flannery O鈥機onnor when we read: 鈥淎 good porch is hard to leave.鈥� In 鈥淧erson Familiar with the Situation,鈥� one of the book鈥檚 final poems, we get: 鈥淥ur history repeals itself.鈥� The cumulative effect of these slightly altered phrases is intentional. Woolard is making a familiar world unfamiliar. She is opening our eyes to the violence we don鈥檛 see because we鈥檙e accustomed to it.
The South is so alive as a character in the book partially because the setting is so often personified. 鈥淭he fat rain ... gives its best advice鈥� in the poem 鈥淟eading.鈥� A truck鈥檚 windshield is 鈥渟mitten with insects鈥� in 鈥淕et Lost.鈥� The weather and manmade objects have agency and feelings. What鈥檚 frightening, and the crux of the book, is when the opposite happens. Woolard鈥檚 similes show people, specifically girls, with their agency stripped away. In 鈥淣o Place Like Home,鈥� we鈥檙e presented with 鈥減rom- // Fluffed girls like sugar roses on grocery / store sheet cakes.鈥� Not only have these girls been likened to inanimate objects, they鈥檝e become edible, delicious, something the wolf would surely devour.
In the three-page titular poem, we get a morgue-like callback to that image: 鈥淔rosting on a cold cake. Both girls breathless in their own bodies now.鈥� Earlier in the poem, we read: 鈥淭wo girls ride ruthlessly / Beside one another鈥攐ne filthy as a story, the other filthy // As a storyteller.鈥� Both girls are implicated by the shared descriptor, but the idiomatic tone suggests that 鈥渇ilthy鈥� is the label of society more so than it is the speaker鈥檚 opinion, as if their crime is simply for existing as girls. Though when that fine distinction of 鈥渟tory鈥� versus 鈥渟toryteller鈥� is made, it also raises questions of ownership and responsibility.
It is a slippery poem inspired by a slippery world. In the beginning the speaker describes them as 鈥渢wo girls,鈥� then later in the poem an 鈥淚鈥� appears; the speaker听becomes听one of those two girls. And the other girl? The other girl is 鈥済otten gone...an inside job.鈥� There is grief in the book and there is guilt, both heightened by the other. How do we reckon with our own culpability鈥攔eal or imagined or both鈥攊n a world saturated with violence?
Bo Schwabacher's听Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs
Reviewed by Claire Wahmanholm
听 听 听 听 听 My rice is watery.
听 听 听 听 听 Associative of Addition: (a + b) + c = a + (b + d)
听 听 听 听 听 I looked this up on yahoo.com:听雼轨嫚鞚� 靷瀾頃╇媹雼�
So begins the opening poem of Bo Schwabacher鈥檚 debut collection,听Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs听(Tinderbox Editions, 2021). As the book鈥檚 anchor, 鈥淐onfessions of an Adopted Asian American鈥� promises bluntness, directness, honesty. It promises vulnerability, a strong voice, self-awareness. Confidence听in both senses. We get all this and more from听Omma. We lean closer, even though this book is hard to read, is not interested in making trauma (sexual, domestic, racial) palatable. Schwabacher鈥檚 voice is punchy, lean, and dross-less. It leads us through both figurative and literal journeys as the speaker reckons with alienation (from an ancestral homeland, an ancestral language, a body, a self) and abandonment. In 鈥淛unnam Province, My Birthplace,鈥� one of the book鈥檚 early poems, Schwabacher writes, 鈥淚 am only beginning to fold/ my birth records into paper airplanes.鈥�
This reckoning is slippery. In poems like 鈥淕eometry,鈥� the speaker admits that 鈥淸t]he moon shifts with integral calculus/ as does my understanding// of what it means to be loved,鈥� and asks 鈥淸w]hat is the volume of a childhood//where you heard听I love you/ but did not feel seen? What is the area of a house with leaks?鈥�
The speaker realizes that untangling these knots will require turning both backward and inward; will require connecting to her past in a way that had previously been denied to her. This enterprise is bittersweet. The speaker acknowledges that 鈥渓ess than 3% of adopted Koreans find their mothers鈥� (鈥淩ice Cake Idioms鈥�), but reconnecting to her ancestral customs and rituals allows her mourning to become productive: 鈥渘ow, I鈥檓/starting to//see my/options鈥�//how making/red bean paste//for sweet red/bean buns is//like making/room for my//dead, a s茅ance鈥� (鈥淎n Adopted Korean Girl Plans Out Her Future Feelings鈥擜 Ritual鈥�).
The poems themselves become a way to suture the sores of abandonment and betrayal; their lines function as threads, flung out relentlessly across a wound to draw the edges together into something stable and honest and secure. This is, ultimately, a book of healing, even if that healing is incremental and uneven. It is a perpetual, hopeful project. There is both love and sweetness at the end: 鈥淩est easy, mother,鈥� Schwabacher writes in 鈥淩ice Cake Idioms.鈥� 鈥淚 have been offered seconds,/ you could love the sticky rice steamed in lotus leaves,// the sweet-jewels I eat in bed.鈥�
听is originally from Bloomington, IN. Her work appears or is forthcoming in听Missouri Review鈥�s 鈥淧oem of the Week,鈥�听Fairy Tale Review,听Prairie Schooner,听Poet Lore,听and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize
听is the author of听Night Vision听(New Michigan Press 2017),听Wilder听(Milkweed Editions 2018),听Redmouth听(Tinderbox Editions 2019), and the forthcoming听Meltwater听(Milkweed Editions 2023). Her work has most recently appeared in, or is forthcoming from,听Ninth Letter, Blackbird, Washington Square Review, New Poetry from the Midwest 2019, Good River Review, Descant, Copper Nickel, and听Beloit Poetry Journal. She is a 2020-2021 McKnight Fellow, and lives in the Twin Cities.