Say It Hurts听by Lisa Summe (YesYes Books, 2021)听
Reviewed by Audrey Gidman
Lisa Summe鈥檚 debut collection,听Say It Hurts鈥攁ll grit and brilliance鈥攊s stacked with elegies, apertures, love stories, buzzcuts, self portraits 脿 la selfies, and the static invisibility of grief: 鈥淭he apples in the fruit bowl shine like they are not even real. / From here, it is impossible to see their bruises.鈥� A real-time manual for queer heartbreak, for tending a garden that sprouts in bathrooms and bedrooms and the backseats of cars鈥攄ifficult, erotic, sprawling, true鈥擲umme鈥檚 poems ask us to look right into the sky as it rains. These poems pinch the heart a little bloody, filling it with longing; each page renders the reader quiet with the moon in their mouth. A story鈥攏o, a still life,听苍辞鈥攊n which queer poems are grief poems, praise poems are grief poems, and grief poems are the life as it happened: soft and pink as a flower and totally gutted.
The ache of fathers. The ache of ex-lovers. The ache of queerness in a young body, in this world, again and again. This book, with its secrets and spells plastered on neon billboards, all song and pang and sinew, all honesty and slow jilt, articulates the emergent process of growing up and coming out and finding north again, again. As shown in one of Summe鈥檚 鈥淐oming Out鈥� poems, a series spackled like stars in the early sky of the manuscript, holding the ache of queer shame up against the bright and aching shamelessness of living:
听 听 听 听 听 I am always here by accident.听
听 听 听 听 听 Some people get on their knees听
听 听 听 听 听 when they apologize, push听
听 听 听 听 听 their hands together in hopes of forgiveness.听
听 听 听 听 听 I am on my knees & this is no apology.听
听 听 听 听 听 I am on my knees & my hands are full.
The craft erupts unapologetically as the words are left unsaid in these moments of adjacence. Narrative, conversational, masterful, sharp, a thousand papercuts鈥攁 diary of the hardest, simplest truths.
Summe turns the key in the very first poem: 鈥淲hen a lesbian / writes a poem / it鈥檚 a lesbian poem.鈥� These are lesbian poems. These are grief poems. These are breakup poems. These are everyday poems. These are the poems that give a name to the hollow.
White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia听by Kiki Petrosino (Sarabande Books, 2020)
Reviewed by Sunni Brown Wilkinson
What if you could descend into the wreckage of your ancestry, enter the hazy depths, and lift to the surface pieces of your identity? This is what Kiki Petrosino accomplishes in her newest book听White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia. Like an expert diver, Petrosino takes us down below the surface to explore the makeup of not only her own identity but that of our nation. We follow as she rises, arms filled with historical documents, memories, a few names, and above all a map of her DNA that complicates our definitions of race. Some of these artifacts detonate; others, even when shaken, yield a deep silence.
There is at once a shattering and a coming together in these poems, many of them constructed in parts and sections that don鈥檛 so much coalesce as invade each other. A crown of sonnets, strings of erasures, persona poems, villanelles, poems about slaves, Thomas Jefferson, and Louisa County, Virginia explode and populate the book鈥檚 close study on personal and national identity.
In erasures of DNA test results titled 鈥淲hat Your Results Mean,鈥� Petrosino amplifies the 鈥渨hite space鈥� where black voices have traditionally been silenced. In her expertly wrought villanelles, she chafes against the often inaccurate narrative of the 鈥渇reed slaves.鈥� For instance, in 鈥淢essage From the Free Smiths of Louisa County,鈥� she teases out why these freed slaves 鈥渁voided the courthouse, the census, the bank.鈥� Such institutions had failed them all their lives and swallowed nearly everything for their posterity but their names.
And deep within many of the poems is a clear sense of 鈥渙therness鈥� not only in her ancestors鈥� lives but also in her own. In a crown of sonnets ironically titled 鈥淗appiness,鈥� Petrosino describes the 鈥渢wo-ness听one ever feels鈥� as a bi-racial student accepted to a University where she must face 鈥渢hose white kids/ whose turn (some said) I took.鈥� But this 鈥渙therness鈥� moves beyond race. In Sonnet 7 she鈥檚 handing out delicacies at a party at the choir teacher鈥檚 home and notices 鈥淥ne whole/ chamber just for books.鈥� She confesses,
听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听With
听 听 听 听 听 my eyes, I robbed it bare. No one
听 听 听 听 听 saw me chomp the chandelier.
听 听 听 听 听 It went down, a carnival onion.
听 听 听 听 听 My jaws grew: salt-sharp & strange.
Her hunger for language matches her hunger for acceptance, for the kind of privilege and ease her black ancestors were also denied.
Finally, near the end of the book, explosions give way to supplications. In 鈥淧salm鈥� Petrosino asks of God and his 鈥渞eckoning curve鈥�: 鈥淥 Gazer, be kind in thy absorbing/ calculus,鈥� an acknowledgment of the mathematics of a history we cannot solve. And in 鈥淎pproaching the Smith Family Graveyard,鈥� there鈥檚 a tenuous quiet as the 鈥測ou鈥� in the poem approaches a wood deep in the acreage of her ancestors鈥� land. She recognizes 鈥淔reedom is old here鈥� in this place where Butler Smith was left an estate by 鈥渨hitefolks.鈥� Now, after the tireless searching, the law and history concede, offer some reprieve. And the final line sums up this collection鈥檚 deep struggle:听
听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听听Any
听 听 听 听 听 descendant may access a grave听says the law
听 听 听 听 听 you printed before climbing the fence.
听 听 听 听 听 This is freedom, for now.
We the Jury by Wayne Miller (Milkweed Editions, 2021)
Reviewed by Tryphena Yeboah
If what we leave behind is never fully lost to us, that the past is often alive鈥斺�渁 sealed room that still exists鈥濃�攁nd manifests in big and small ways, then Wayne Miller鈥檚听We the Jury听is a good-hearted testament to not only the intricate treading of history but also to enduring love, and the radical strength required to thrive in a ravaged world. Drawing on language that is both sharp in its interrogation and concise in its confession, Miller presents in his fifth poetry collection, a compelling addition to the American lyric.听We the Jury听charts an unexpected progression听 as it begins with the speaker retelling the last public hanging in US history. Miller writes in 鈥淥n Progress鈥�:
听 听 听 听 听 The condemned man
听 听 听 听 听 looking out on the crowd before him
听 听 听 听 听 Must feel that every person there has become
听 听 听 听 听 inhuman. Why won鈥檛 they rush forward
听 听 听 听 听 to save him?
As 鈥渢he trapdoor drops and the body pulls down against the life鈥� in one poem, another poem, 鈥淭wo Thousand And Nine,鈥� depicts the interior life of a family threatened by foreclosure, the loss of a 鈥減lace in history鈥� suddenly shifting from a home to 鈥渁 geometric cell assigned a value as if from space.鈥� Like many of the poems, there appears to be a layering of small stories, that a piece can be so wisely crafted that there are open mysteries embedded in stanzas, demanding that the reader sits with the words awhile, an urgent occupation of text that is alive with imagery and an unsettling complication of emotions.
What Miller does with the expression and capacity of love is magnificent and indeed, memorable. The poems enlarge its concept, open it up in a way that is not a vague, distant thought to the reader, but rather, a real outward force, a gentle beckoning to every wild and quiet possibility. The result is an evocative reflection that is simple and slow-moving. It is what I make of 鈥淢iddle Age鈥� and 鈥淢ind-Body Problem,鈥� love poems by a speaker who admits their fear, revealing that they 鈥渇eel the possibility of plunging/ through that vastness into nothing,鈥� and yet, in the presence of their lover, they are 鈥渆ased back into this headlong / forward hurtling / that鈥檚 kind/ of stillness.鈥� And when the devastating reality of a brain tumor is confronted, it is done stubbornly, desperately, and not without hope:
听 听 听 听 听 But your heart is not your mind.
听 听 听 听 听 The curve of your hip; the soft
听 听 听 听 听 skin of your wrist is not your mind.
听 听 听 听 听 The tumor growing in your brain
听 听 听 听 听 is just your brain, I say.
听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 The shape
听 听 听 听 听 of your face; the sound of your voice,
听 听 听 听 听 which I love so much, is not your mind.
Miller writes with attentiveness and a rare affection as he alternates between a collective interrogation and the speaker鈥檚 self examination in relation to time鈥攑ast and present. In听We the Jury,听one is offered a trajectory with not much clue of what lies in wait, but war and peace should be expected, and so should life and death. Most importantly, readers can rely on Miller鈥檚 sincere language and sensibilities to walk them through the poems, and possibly, arrive with a question or an answer for themselves; mine will knock on this heart for some time: 鈥�When things die, we give them back to the earth. And then we forget them there?鈥澨�
Audrey Gidman听is a queer poet living in central Maine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in听SWWIM,听The West Review,听Doubleback Review,听茅poque press,听FEED,听ang(st),听and elsewhere. She received her BFA from the University of Maine Farmington and her chapbook,听body psalms, winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, is forthcoming from Slate Roof Press.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson鈥檚听poetry can be found in听Western Humanities Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden鈥檚 Ferry Review, SWWIM, Ruminate听and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of听The Marriage of the Moon and the Field听(Black Lawrence Press) and听The Ache & The Wing听(forthcoming from Sundress Publications). She also won听New Ohio Review鈥檚听NORward Poetry Prize and the 2020 Joy Harjo Prize from听Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Wilkinson teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.
听is the author of the chapbook听A Mouthful of Home, selected by the African Poetry Book Fund. Her stories have appeared in听Narrative Magazine听and听Commonwealth Writers, among others. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she鈥檚 teaching and pursuing a doctorate in English with a focus on creative writing.