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vaguely_pink's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Biphobia, Eating disorder, Homophobia, Mental illness, Rape, Self harm, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Trafficking, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Ableism and Alcohol
nona_lea's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
body language by a. a. hiebert is a debut poetry collection, functioning as both a confession and an autobiography, is a reclamation of autonomy and voice.
It begins with a simple, sleek cover design: a bare-skinned woman posing confidently against a background of evergreen. The design, reminiscent of collections like Milk and Honey, indicates to the audience poems inside are accessible—direct, unapologetic, and not requiring readers to run to a dictionary every second word.
The collection is prefaced with a content warning for details of violence and sexual assault, mental illness, self-harm, and slurs against LGBT+ individuals, preparing readers who they themselves may face these issues and might be triggered by the subject matter.
Throughout body language, the poet incorporates a minimalist style, various metaphors, and visual poetry.
When I see a writer incorporate visual poetry, I often stop and think to myself, why did they choose this style? While Hiebert sometimes accentuates literal meanings such in the case of “bang. /bang. /bang.” in “ribcage” (pg 10), she also uses visual elements as narrative devices.
In “i love her/i love her not”, a poem about finding love, the phrases fall down the page, elongating as they alternate, landing on “i love her not,” telling the audience after five years her love broke up with her.
In the case of “body language” (pg 22), the brief use of visual elements enhances the sub-narrative of fragmentation of self.
Yet, while this collection contains visual elements, it is not itself a collection of visual poetry. Balance is essential for any work of art to be understood and enjoyed. As one who write poetry playing with space and visual elements frequently, it comes with a notable drawback: dissonance of reading enjoyability due to the obscure and often labyrinth nature of the form. body language does not create a puzzle to solve like in Whereas. It is more of a club, a sisterhood, speaking directly to those who have similar traumas and telling them, I see you.
While there are poems touching on queerness and mental health, the main thread of the collection is about sexual assault. Poems such as “survivor’s guilt”, “straitjacket”, and “acquired taste” tackle the realities of sexual assault for women, while others like “playground” is autobiographical trauma. Yet, it is these four poems which stand out at the core thesis of this collection: “5 foot 2”, “playground”, (fittingly) “body language”, and “aurora”.
Throughout the collection I had noticed the consistent theme of lower-case letters and wondered their significance. “5 foot 2” (pg 2) explains why—
age 12,
when my body decided
that i didnt need to take up any more space.
and the world agreed.
and the world
loved my body.
and the world
didnt know me.
the lowercased letters indicate a smallness not only in height, but also of a voice reduced to mutters. Taking up space boulders as you read on to mean mental health problems others don’t want to hear because they either don’t want to understand or feel repelled by the topics.
This leads us to “playground” (pg 7) which continues the theme of length, adding another component: the age difference between victim and rapist. Hence, the smaller case “i”, boulders from just being about height and voice to the diminutiveness of agency.
It is in “body language” (pg 22) where we see a shift in the narrator, addressing the previous poems with “my body is a language / no one seems to know,” leading to the conclusion and declaration, my body is a language / saying / never touch me again.
Similar to Laurie Halse Andersons’s SHOUT, Heibert authors this book to reclaim her voice from those who have stolen it. However, while one might anticipate this book to have a transitional arc, beginning from misery and transcending to comfort, this collection thwarts expectations of the reader and creates a flat arc. Why?
The collection closes with “dear future me”, full of wishes that the narrator will look back on this collection on day and all that trauma will have been in the past, but this is currently not her present. The narrator still suffers from an awfully specific trauma health experts are puzzled to solve. body language is not meant to change us, as so many other collections ask, but for us to understand others. That’s why there is no transient arc for the narrator. There also aren’t always answers for others having their own mental and physical health battles. This is where body language displays a truth few want to hear: trauma is not one and done and the current socioeconomic system is, in the politest terms, inadequate to care for those who desperately need it.
Before you walk away from this book with unsettling reality, there is a final poem we must talk about. As many might wonder when reading truly raw, personal experiences, why rip out your heart and put it in a glass case for the world to see? The answer lies in “aurora” (pg 70).
See, the most likely reader to pick up this book is someone who has experienced the same or eclipsing experiences as touched on in this collection. Perhaps they too are not ready to speak up for themselves. Perhaps they grapple with the overwhelming weight of it all. But, if the narrator was unable to find a way out, craft a happy-ever-after for herself, then what does this leave readers with? As said in “aurora”
and when you feel your writing
doesn’t save you,
just know it saves the rest of us.
No words could be truer. Just speaking about one’s trauma leads to others feeling empowered to do so. Holding in trauma causes shame to fester and become an uncontrollable entity within yourself. Through unapologetically sharing her life, the poet validates the experiences of those who have not yet spoken and tells them, you are not alone.