Genevieve Kaplan : Dressing the Wounds, by Rebecca Hart Olander

Dressing the Wounds, Rebecca Hart Olander
Dancing Girl Press, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rebecca Hart Olander’s chapbook Dressing the Wounds contains poems addressing themes from family to memory, from ecology to art, from musical harmony to domestic argument, frequently through the lens of lovely quotidian scenes of daily life.

“The octopus has three hearts. If I did, / I would put one in a bottle / at night, let it glow,” Olander begins. These lines from the opening poem “Makeshift Octopus” allow readers to immediately understand the tone and approach in this chapbook: the poems here tend to ground us in scientific fact while simultaneously expressing affecting sentiment. The poem continues by explaining how, for humans with just one human heart, romantic love will only every get “the upper-left-hand atrium” because one must “keep a ventricle for myself, one for children, / the last for strangers.” The biology of the octopus becomes a way to articulate the conflicting emotional demands of contemporary life.

Throughout Dressing the Wounds, science and sentiment continue to be intertwined. The title poem explores the emotional wound of divorce though a similar ecological frame, this time through fungus, flowers, trees, and fire. Here readers learn how “Chaga spreads / its bandage of stunning mycology” over birch trees and “Chicory, blue wildflower” is “used for healing” (10); later in the poem, the speaker wonders, after we are “torn from each other and made separate,” “What will it take to heal?” (11). The collected poems in Dressing the Wounds offer the beginnings of an answer that question.

Olander’s poems often highlight positive and communal aspects of family life; the poet frequently uses a direct address to a family member. In “Hurricane Necklace,” she writes “Daughter, I’ve been thinking about…” and continues, “Remember how you made those block cities…. You loved it” (2).  Many poems address another “you,” the romantic and domestic partner, inviting them to “brush your voice against my body” (32) or describing how “you call out to the children” (3) and “I see you bending by the sink” (8). The poems in Dressing the Wounds don’t shy away from the less glamorous aspects of living with others. Poems take place while "driving home from dinner" (34), as "I weed...the crabgrass" (36), or while "Watching Love Do the Dishes" (8); they hone in on "conversations in between the computer and school and sleep, / in between friends and sports and head-phoned music" (4).

Also, this chapbook is sad. The poems in Dressing the Wounds almost always also grapple with loss or enact a thinking through of potential losses. These poems, though, while tackling everyday and difficult subjects, never feel weary or repetitive. Olander’s use of sophisticated figurative language elevates her poems and draws readers in. Her similes feel apt, as she describes “the liar bird / [who] can copy the chainsaw gutting the forest, / the car alarm piercing its canopy" (19) or how "The sky is purpled blue, lung / tissue" (28). She describes the desire for intimacy beautifully, as "our two bodies like tines of a struck fork, / letting the overtones die until we emit pure music" (3). Olander’s poems are also wonderfully inventive: in the poem “Poetry,” a sort of ars poetica, she writes, "I want... / tusks / to curl like ivory swords right out of my face" (18). Such surprising and pleasurable descriptions create a consistent and sometimes magical locality for readers, bringing us fully into Olander’s poetic world.

As the title poem declares, “There is no miracle, or all is miracle” (11). Ultimately, the poems in Olander’s chapbook present to readers the work and wonder of poetry: it can transform the uncomfortable, the unbeautiful, the casual, and the distressing into something not only gratifying, but into something miraculous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books); In the ice house (Red Hen Press), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation‘s poetry publication prize; and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right (above/ground press), an anti-ode to office work. Her poems can be found in Posit, Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Since 2003, she’s been editing the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. Genevieve lives in southern California. More at https://genevievekaplan.com/

Genevieve Kaplan : EDGE, by Barbara Ungar

EDGE, Barbara Ungar
Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2020

 

 

 

 

Barbara Ungar’s EDGE, a handsome chapbook with the image of a deteriorating 6^th century elephant mosaic sewn to its front cover, telegraphs its themes pretty immediately: the fading of Earth’s species, the devastating environmental impacts humans are causing and witnessing. The title points to the EDGE (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) list while also highlighting our precarious position. Ungar’s poems take us from “the deepest bellies // of lantern fish” (8) to “a captive breeding program in a trailer” in Hawaii (31) to “the tourist trail” in “Myanmar, still Burma / then” (19), all the while sharing observations and facts about the animals, insects, birds, or fish who live there, or used to.

The opening poem “As If” lays out the problem at the heart of EDGE: “We cannot even count the ants / or name the animals / before we wipe them out” (7). This is a sad and disturbing proclamation, to be sure. In some ways, though, the poems in this chapbook do the work of offsetting this claim; Ungar includes an impressive variety of animals—ants, penguins, seahorses, dragonfish, fruit flies, moths, caterpillars, sharks, turtles, spiders, jaguars, polar bears, hummingbirds, snails, jellyfish, octopuses, among others—in these pages. While Ungar doesn’t count the animals per se, she does often name them, including italicized Latin terms beneath her poems’ titles. The poem “Godzilla Vs. Nomura,” for example, includes the parenthetical “(Nemopilema nomurai)” so interested readers can google and learn more about the particular jellyfish “swarming beaches” and “clogging nuclear reactors” and “wiping out sturgeon” (36). Ungar also conveys factual information about Nemopilema nomurai in her poem, poetically of course: they “grow from a grain of rice to the size / of a washing machine in six months” (36).

As often as Ungar reminds us that “Owls are all but gone from Arizona” (20) or how “Half Earth’s creatures / have vanished in the last half century” (28), she avoids offering a lecture, or making readers feel condescended to. Instead, the poet tends to point out peculiarities, inconsistencies, oddities, and entertaining facts about animals. While we may be helpless to stop the environmental failures already occurred, Ungar’s poems invite us to know more about what is happening now, and to learn about the species being affected. When the Minute Leaf Chameleon (Brookesia Minima) is in danger, it’ll “drop to leaf / litter and play dead / twig” (10). Blue whale “[c]alves guzzle 1000 gallons / of milk, gain 200 pounds a day” (15). The Bumblebee Bat has “thumbs with claws / & uropatagium, webbed hind legs” (18). And “jaguars / can bite through skulls” (22).

The knowledge Ungar offers is not merely about the animals in question; some poems helpfully trace background information to inform readers why these species are threatened or threatening. “China’s runoff causes blooms / of giant pink Nomura’s jellyfish,” (36), she points out in “Godzilla vs. Nomura.” Ungar reveals that the “Madagascan Moon Moth” is a victim of multiple types of capitalism. It’s been “[e]ndangered by slash and burn,” and “[y]ou can buy / their eggs online (ten for twenty pounds) / their exquisite corpses, framed” (12). Knowing the causes of habitat or species loss might encourage us to find our own ways, however small, to help stop future damage. By reading these poems, we accumulate pieces of knowledge and understanding that allow us some agency in the face of climate grief.

The twenty-four poems collected here are not all sadness and inditement. The creatures in Ungar’s poems are often described by subtle ironies, even in the face of extinction. In “Lonesomest George,” a poem that considers the last of the Achatinella apexfulva, George the snail “ended his days / alone” in a breeding lab called “the love shack” (31). A similar dry wit pervades “Average Monkey,” a poem focusing more on humans than animals. Ungar writes,

When my father began to hallucinate,
          he saw heads in the dishwasher and the cupboards

I know they aren’t real he said
          but sometimes I wonder what they like to eat   

Like the other species mentioned in EDGE, the human in the poem (“my father”) is deteriorating; also surprising is how the imagined humans (“heads in the dishwasher”) in the poem aren’t passive; even they are consumers who “like to eat.”

The poet’s attention to language continually keeps readers engaged. Ungar’s taut line breaks may describe “the ever / shrinking ever // green rain / forest” (11), but as her short lines narrow they also create sonic pleasure: habitat is “shrinking,” but the end words that emphasize “ever” “ever” “forest” create an almost-hopeful optimism that rings in our ears after we’ve turned the page. In “Rhinochimaera,” the poet lists varieties like “spearnose / paddlenose       straightnose      knifenose” (33) to describe varieties of cartilaginous fish, allowing readers to linger in the pleasure and strangeness of language and image; she further describes these “marine monsters” as looking “like // the lovechild of Dumbo and a shark” (33). Some of my favorite moments are when the poet brings the self into the poem; through Ungar’s first person narrator readers experience moments of emotional connection. “I was in a torpor too” (19), the speaker acknowledges, or “I felt the cat / I shit you not / hunkered in her fur” (29). EDGE is a compelling read all around. This short collection is particularly notable for its crucial subject matter, its even-handed approach, and its grounding in science and contemporary culture. But it’s Ungar’s masterful wielding of material that makes EDGE so pleasurable. We want to read these poems, and—importantly—we then want to return to this chapbook and to read these poems again.

 

 

 

 

 

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020), In the ice house (Red Hen, 2011), and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right (above/ground 2020). Her poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming from Bennington Review, Posit, TinFish, and The Second Factory. She lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. More at https://genevievekaplan.com/

Genevieve Kaplan: Toad Press: Working Alone, Working Together

 

 

I started the Toad Press International chapbook series back in 2003 for a variety of reasons. One reason was to stave off literary loneliness. I’d just finished my MFA program at Iowa, where I was lucky enough to also take courses in letterpress printing and book arts through the Iowa Center for the Book and meet cool translators though Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), and I wanted to find a way to stay involved in the writing world post-graduation. I was worried about losing connection with great writing, creative ideas, and literary enthusiasm as I ventured out into my post-MFA world.

Starting the press was pretty simple in those pre-internet days. We emailed literary friends and acquaintances to let them know we were starting a micro-press and were seeking translations. We took out a free classified ad in Poets & Writers. We received our first batch of submissions, and, with the help of our copy machine, our bone folders, and our long-reach stapler, in 2004 we published our first chapbook: Nick Moudry’s translation of Tristan Tzara’s Twenty-Five and One Poems.

Since that first publication, Toad Press has pretty much followed the same DIY aesthetic. We select 1-3 titles during our annual open winter reading period to publish each summer, and we fold and staple each chapbook by hand. We still use the website (well, the blogspot) that we built in 2004. A few things have changed: we learned pretty quickly that Poets & Writers wasn’t the best place to reach translators, and we made virtual friends with more focused organizations like the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Around 2009, we created a Facebook page and started growing a larger audience. In 2011, we started using Submittable (then named Submishmash, and available for free) to manage our submissions and list our chapbooks for purchase.

Today we picked up the freshly trimmed copies of our latest chapbook, The Cheapest France in Town (poems by Seo Jung Hak, translated by Megan Sungyoon) from our local shop. The owner asked who’d folded the books he’d just trimmed and looked rather aghast when I said I’d folded them all myself, at home. Some people would call that crazy, he said. Well, here at Toad Press we like to keep things cheap and nimble. And we like to keep our hands busy.

To be clear, the “we” of Toad Press has essentially always meant “me.” Sean Bernard, my partner in all things, helps choose what to publish and weighs in on cover and design choices, which is excellent. When it comes to communicating with translators, and doing the work of formatting, designing, printing, folding, and publicizing the chapbooks, though, that’s all me. These are aspects of the small press world that I really enjoy, and I choose to do them because they make me happy. I like participating in the process that moves words off the screen and makes them into little books you can pass to a friend. I like knowing that I’ve touched and folded each of the pages in our chapbooks. I like that I know where all the little hiccups were. As a writer myself, I enjoy getting see the other side of the publication process; lifting up writers and translators, making literary work physically accessible, giving a translator a book to hold in their hands that makes their eyes light up: these are all wonderful things. And my ongoing work with Toad Press helps me feel like I’m always a productive part of the larger literary community.

On the flip side, running what is essentially a one-woman chapbook operation means that I’m continually aware that choosing to publish literary translations is a choice I alone am making. I choose to invest weeks of energy into each chapbook. I send many emails. I buy reams of paper from Costco. I walk the aisles of Kelly Paper looking for the right cover stock. I print proofs and proofs and proofs. I drive to the copy shop. I fold and fold and fold. I deplete boxes of staples. They know me at the post office. And so on.

Running Toad Press is essentially a part-time job that I don’t get paid for. Which means that when I’m making choices about how to run the chapbook series, I must also make the choices that work best for me personally, choices that suit my budget and my whims and my other commitments and my lifestyle. I’m also aware that these choices may not be in the best interest of “the press” as its own successful entity. Almost every summer—while I’m printing, folding, stapling—I ask myself: Should I keep doing this? Am I the right person to do this?

The answer to those questions has always, ultimately, been yes. Last summer, though, I started asking myself not only the usual questions about carrying on, but also some new ones: what would happen to the press if I stopped wanting to make chapbooks? If I couldn’t afford to commit the time each summer? If I got sick and could no longer spend the energy folding? If, with limited time or money resources, I needed to focus other people or projects instead?

Usually I’m drawn to the ephemeral nature of the chapbook form, but when I started thinking about the potential end of Toad Press, thinking about the press as having a sort of expiration date made me sad. These concerns made me realize that I really wanted to keep Toad Press viable, and that viability might involve some changes. While we didn’t necessarily want to make the press larger, or bring more volunteers aboard, or totally change our DIY production process, we did want to make a space for more potential and possibility. Our solution was to think about collaboration, teaming up with like-minded people already successfully doing their own thing in order to hopefully make both of our things better.

 

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I’d admired Veliz Books’ publications long before I submitted my poetry manuscript (aviary) during their open reading period in 2019. It was selected for publication, and I had a wonderful experience working with Lau Cesarco Eglin, Kristal Acuña, and everyone on the Veliz Books team. Lau’s editorial style, her feedback and suggestions as we worked together on (aviary), was so helpful; I appreciated her close readings, and how she was able to be assertive but also make author feel heard. I’d long run Toad Press by imagining how I’d most like to be treated if I was the publishee rather than the publisher and working with Veliz as an author felt like much the experience I’d ideally imagined.

As Sean and I got to know Veliz better, it became more and more apparent how our interests—what type of writing we tend to publish as well as who we publish—overlap. Toad Press’s focus is on contemporary literary translation; Veliz Books publishes poetry and prose in English, as well as translations from Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician. Earlier this year, Veliz published Naomi Washer’s novel Subjects We Left Out; Toad Press had published her translation Experimental Gardening Manual, poems by Sebastián Jiménez Galindo in 2019. Veliz Books published The Ghetto, Seth Michelson’s translation of Tamara Kamenszain’s El ghetto in 2018; Toad Press published Roly Poly, Michelson’s translation of poems by Victoria Estol in 2014. Too, we learned that Veliz was down a prose editor. Might Sean be of service, we wondered?

We reached out to Veliz Books with our ideas about collaboration, our concerns about being a solo operation, and our enthusiasm for the future. Delightfully, it turned out we found our new literary partner! After extensively thinking through the pros and cons for both our presses, having many talks and discussions, we are all excited that Toad Press has officially become an imprint of Veliz Books.

Veliz Books and Toad Press agreed that both presses could gather momentum and get more excellent work done if we work together. As an imprint Toad Press will be able to expand its reach and get our translations into the hands of more readers. Our partnership means our presses can participate together in the literary world: at conferences, readings, and other events. Together, we look forward to continuing to support exciting, literary writing and cheering on our authors and translators. Hopefully we’ll also come up with some new fun literary initiatives to collaborate on.

It’s my sense that things will not change for Toad Press overmuch now that it’s an imprint, at least not very quickly. Sean and I will continue selecting and publishing Toad Press chapbooks. I’ll keep folding and stapling and mailing. We’ll keep our current blogspot website, and we’ll continue using our trusty Submittable account for submissions and sales.

That said, our partnership has already resulted in some rather professional-feeling changes for our little chapbook series: we now have a Toad Press tab on the Veliz Books site and our chapbooks are available for purchase in the Veliz Books store. We’ve added the Toad Press + Veliz Books logo to our chapbooks, too, to better signify our connection.

I’m excited about what Toad Press’s new imprint status means for the press, but I’m also excited about what it means for me. I started Toad Press because I wanted to create new literary connections, and because I wanted to stay involved in the literary community. But I realize in some ways my DIY methods have been antithetical to community building. Now, Toad Press is part of team. So next month, when I’m home formatting and printing and folding copies of Faith in Strangers, Mark Tardi’s translation of Katarzyna Szaulińska’s poems, the questions I’ll be asking myself will be a little bit different. Instead of wondering about if I should keep the series going for another year, I will ask instead: Which Veliz title would pair well with this translation? How can Toad and Veliz use our platforms to further promote and share various literary voices? Should we offer a book bundle for our readers? What else might we take on together? How and when can we best support our translators, our authors, and each other?

I’m excited to know I’ll be having more of these discussions about translation, collaboration, publishing, and literary community. Almost 20 years after starting the press, I’m having new ideas—not just about what I can do, but what we can do—and seeing so much possibility and potential. And that feels great.

 

 

 

 

 

The Toad Press International Chapbook Series publishes contemporary, exciting, beautiful, odd, and avant-garde chapbook-length translations of poetry and prose. Toad Press is an imprint of Veliz Books. Toad Press chapbooks are edited and published by Genevieve Kaplan & Sean Bernard

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books); In the ice house (Red Hen Press); and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right from above/ground press. Her poems can be found in Posit, Can we have our ball back?, Poetry, and other journals. She lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose.

Genevieve Kaplan : Elsewhere, Nicole Callihan and Zoë Ryder White

Elsewhere, Nicole Callihan and Zoë Ryder White
Sixth Finch, 2020

 

 

Elsewhere, co-authored by poets Nicole Callihan and Zoë Ryder White, is a compelling example of collaborative writing. The chapbook is divided into five numbered sections, each holding three to eight pages of poetry. Each page offers readers 1-3 stanzas; typically the first stanza on each page is left justified, the second is right justified, and so on, creating a visual back and forth for the reader to follow. There are no titles, aside from the title of the chapbook. Elsewhere presents as a complete and cohesive piece: the poems in this chapbook veer between lyrical, interruptive, and reflective.

Themes explored throughout Elsewhere include family (“my children,” “my husband,” “my mother,” “my yellow-haired girl,” “Eva,” and “Ella”), the body (“the skin / of my inner / arm,” “the blood in my ears”), and movement and location (the title itself, “the train / to Astoria,” “mini van / delivering your children to school in the snow!,” views of the “Manhattan sky,” or a “half-drunk orchard”). In practically every instance these themes are presented straightforwardly, with reflection rather than judgement. The stanzas and lines track the mind and its cogitations to offer readers flashes of moments, details, and insights. In section 4, we put “my finger in the sand / to roust the ghost crabs.” We read “Elsewhere, / unlit, unopened… /Everything is elsewhere.”We encounter mundane and specific interruptions, like “Did your red shoes / ever come?” or “Do you remember the game…?” as well as musings like “If you want to know / the hive’s shape or how it sounds / from outside, you will need to ask / some other particle.”

This “you” traverses the book and invites some lines to be read as conversations, though there’s a continual quiet mystery of who is speaking to whom and when. There is also, of course, the question of you’s counterpart, I. Callihan and White’s poems do draw attention to the self and self-assessment; the authors identify and reconsider “my not-enoughness and all my too-muchness.” They question, “How could I,” “How could I. How could / I long for anything other.” The happenings of daily life that permeate Elsewhere are presented though a lens of quiet self-awareness.  Throughout Elsewhere “I” and “you” are speaking, to themselves and to each other, and while “I” and “you” are clearly interconnected, they are also always shifting. The final stanza of the chapbook continues and conflates its characters: “You: you yous how do you….”

While my impression is that a stanza break likely implies a new narrator is speaking, readers cannot be sure which author—Callihan or White—begins a section or a stanza, or what the “rules” of the collaboration might be. Part of the enjoyment of reading the chapbook is tracing the potential progressions and relationships from one stanza to the next. While Elsewhere doesn’t spell out its generative or collaborative rules, its pages allow glimpses into what process might look like. In section 2, for example, the last line of the first stanza reads “Put that in your pie and it might glow,” and the first line of next stanza begins “That which I put in my pie glows….” Other poems in this collection progress similarly, with a new stanza beginning by riffing on a line or image that came before, building into a complicated, rather surreal domestic narrative. In section 3, we find ourselves “Rolled up in the room’s dark / fur and the blue / electric spark” in one stanza but in the next we’re with “Ella” sleeping “beside me / electric fur of her      blue buzz / of the flies.”

The imagery and moods of Elsewhere are bookended by allusions to an unseen “catalogue,” which in section 1 is noted as having “a good selection / of digressions, insinuations, chiffon, gardenias, / grass, diesel, and insects.” The final page of the chapbook returns readers to this catalogue: “how do you stockpile, / dissemble, / reckon, / wake, / perforate, / condense, / rear? / It’s not just research / for the catalogue.” This catalogue which frames our reading draws attention to the very nature of literary writing, which of course presents “a good selection” and often acts though “dissembling” and “condensing.” Thinking through the idea of assembling or creating a catalogue, too, invites readers to think about the hidden collaborative work that goes into texts like seed or garden catalogues. Elsewhere is a collection of stanzas written by two authors but it still coheres as one long poem. Our narrator is both Callihan and White, presented as a unison, a united entry. The title’s attention to who is else and what is where reminds readers, too, that we are also part of the equation. This collaborative chapbook invites us also to participate and to consider: who am I, where do I fit in?

 

 

 

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020); In the ice house (Red Hen Press, 2011), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation‘s poetry publication prize; and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right (above/ground press, 2020). Her poems can be found in Third Coast, Spillway, Denver Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Posit, and other journals. Genevieve lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. More at https://genevievekaplan.com/

Genevieve Kaplan : Cut Woman, by Dena Igusti

Cut Woman, Dena Igusti
Game Over Books, 2020

 

 

Dena Igusti’s chapbook Cut Woman opens with “the grenade’s lung exhaled into our chests” (6) and spills fearlessly outward from there. Igusti’s poems feel young, alive with emotion and danger, and are frequently exhilarating. Her lines scream, wiggle, redact, allude, leap, interrogate, reflect, and bear witness. Cut Woman’s narrator guides readers through topics of history, family, body, betrayal, and hope, set in a steeped-in-tradition but thoroughly modern cityscape.

The title Cut Woman refers to female genital mutilation, and our narrator offers a frank, descriptive, and very personal take on the practice. In “after the incision” Igusti reveals how “the part that is supposed to be my clitoris / expands & bubbles then bubbles & expands” (9). She acknowledges “there was blood yes / there were remnants of      me [unto which my mother made unto which hers did]” (11). In tackling this taboo subject, our narrator both acknowledges traditional and painful practice and refuses to further subordinate her body. In the poem “sex: a necromancy” she describes not being “allowed to feel” but vows declaratively, “I’ll      make use of what was left of what I     lost” (11).

Igusti’s poems are decidedly contemporary, referencing “CNN’S EVER GROWING BODY COUNT” (34) or suggesting that we “pop one for jj’s boyfriend” (40). At the same time, these poems remain historically and culturally aware, explaining that “to be muslim is to always flow / from our fingertips” (6). History is not just in the past but is always and everywhere. Malay words or snippets of lyrics from Indonesian singer Reza Artamevia occasionally make their way into English poems and titles. In Cut Woman, being American means inviting in the weight of personal, cultural, and religious histories while at the same time trying to fit in and make a new way. Igusti combines ideas like “my ancestry the sidewalk my extended family all // my steps community meeting, my deep breath call / to prayer the breeze” (6), pressing them close together in just a few lines poem. In this description of “ancestry” we see how Igusti removes most punctuation to make more simultaneous connections. Igusti’s dedication to linking form and content extends to her frequent use of slashes within a single line; these slashes function like stutters or cuts not only in the syntax of the line but also in its subject: “making mess // out // of // lineage //” (8).

Iguisti’s poems are consistently innovative in form and approach. The poems in Cut Woman move across the open space of the page confidently and unabashedly: the author inserts double slashes inside lines and at the ends of lines; she incorporates brackets, parentheses, ampersands, and all caps to guide the reader through the emotion of each thought. Throughout this chapbook, there’s a general lack of periods, and our narrator, “i”, is mostly lowercased. Igusti’s poems sometimes include footnote-like asterisks (10, 21) to offer new perspectives or extra information. Her italicized questions, like “don’t you feel pure?” (19), which appear on right margins or in the left-justified bodies of poems, are insertions that remind readers how poems are conversations and may include multiple, punctuating voices. Igusti’s poems may be presented as scripts (14), prose poems (18), or erasures (24, 28, 29-31). Even as her poems range formally, almost wildly, Igusti’s descriptive titles anchor us, offering readers clear-cut descriptions like “self portrait as asa akira’s face on google images when searching ‘asian women’” (16), “portrait of my reflection on a blank computer screen” (18), or “party guidelines” (40).

My favorite poems in Cut Woman explore themes of disembodiment in bold and unexpected ways. The “body” itself becomes a character in poems like “sunat: a recollection (in the wake)” which presents a “scene” where “ME and BODY separate to two masses. they reunite 10 years later to discuss what happened” (14). In other poems, “the body // scoffs” (9), “the body shrugs its shoulders” or “the body takes the shirt we once shared” (9). Body and self unite and disagree, connect and detach, as readers make their way through this collection. “ME: but you’re still here / BODY: doesn’t mean i didn’t die” (14). Ultimately, the narrator admits “i’m forever tethered / to the way / my body is suspended / in memory” (39). With good reason, “all versions of (what’s left of) me” (41) are so incredibly “tired.” Ultimately, while the lines of this chapbook present an impressive range of hurt and despair, the narrator also wants to try, to love, and “TO KISS WITH ALL MY LIMBS” (34). Igusti’s readers are left with the hopeful feeling that self and body will, if not thrive, at least continue courageously making their way through.

 

 

 

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020); In the ice house (Red Hen Press, 2011), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation's poetry publication prize; and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right from above/ground press. Her poems can be found in Third Coast, Spillway, Denver Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Poetry, and other journals. A poet, scholar, and book-maker, Genevieve lives in southern California. She edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. https://genevievekaplan.com/