Elegy for Opportunity, Natalie Lim
Wolsak
& Wynn, 2025
I do like a poetry collection that prompts m to learn. On entering Elegy for Opportunity by Natalie Lim (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) I didn't catch that Opportunity was a very specific one, the Mars rover active from 2004 to 2018. I could compare the narrator point of view to Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow/Harper Collins, 2025) in that the narrator of that novel was relating her emotional energies to a robot world far away in time and space, while Lim's poetry similarly looks out to Mars and a robot as a companion. Whereas Opportunity sent back over a 1000 reports, Lim shares 44 poems with a connecting thread of the little rover that could, an anchoring key. The rover is emblematic of the planet itself with time available ticking away. The rover acts as a counterpoint to our option on earth to build each other up instead of being cut-off from both good and bad. She sets her mind to sorting what is worth keeping, small not-ornamental beauties but moments that make people worth saving.
I don't know the composition of all the poems but they feel like Covid lockdown poems in that they centre around isolation and secondary experiences, like movies, twitter, Spotify, and a video game while the remarked on "unreal" is crickets in a park. Even winter cold is an abstract that becomes a marked form of being. There are musing of dating and dogs, gratitude for a partner who looks after her when not feeling well.
The central idea of Opportunity (and opportunity) act as a tether to hope and love so we don't float off in the deadening polluted waters of information floods. When the world is hard, resistance must cultivate its tenderness. As Tennessee Williams said, "with age comes the realization that nothing is as erotic, attractive, rare or calming as kindness." It is not an automatic given. (p. 9) "I know so much more about tenderness /than I used to. my hands are learning to be kinder,/ reaching for yours across the table, squeezing once/ to remind you that this is all real." Later she returns (p. 50) "I learned tenderness/from the girl across the bar/who didn't know me/but asked if I was okay."
The phrasings throughout are loose and casual, as if confidential to a friend. Spoiler alert: in her title poem Elegy for Opportunity, (p. 11) she reflects how one can be tender and still that not cancelling out the cruelty of what we set in motion for destruction. Hers, a variation on saying sorry doesn't un-break the cup. There's a melancholy to isolation on another world with no means to communicate or return. She does not unpack these things explicitly but leaves that to the reader.
The poems are tender shoots, tentative yet pressing. Many of the poems are snippets such as "Inside Out Made Me Cry This Week". I know I watched the movie but I retained nothing, nonetheless the main thrust is explicit enough to come through. In it she observes "what an odd thing, to know everything about yourself/ and still be on your own side."
It is marvellous how a poet in her 20s is confident enough to put her poetry in public discourse, to stand up and be counted as a poet, to share what she sees from where she stands. "I should not treat poems like subtweets" (p. 4) makes no concession for older paper people who I've seen complain about digital terms. All life is appropriate for tipping into poetry.
Pearl Pirie works on manuscripts in parallel while she lives quietly in Quebec with her loudest part being her laughter, she's told. www.pearlpirie.com Watch for her Pinhole Press chapbook this spring.
