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m0rb's review against another edition
dark
sad
fast-paced
3.5
Beautiful collection of poems, I just couldn’t connect with it at all.
jd_brubaker's review
3.0
The more poetry I read, the more I realize just how much poetry is about grief. All poetry. If it's about love, it's also about grief. If it's about nature, it's also about grief. If it's about identity, it's about grief. If it's about religion, it's about grief. The same is true of this beautiful book of poems by Denise Riley.
This book reproduces Riley's A Part Song, which is one of the most prolific long poems of our time. These lines examine what it means to be human at the most vulnerable level: when we lose someone we love. And I feel I say this in almost every book I review, but it never ceases to be true: while the content itself is not unique - examining the loss of loved ones - the way that Riley uses language to arrive at such a deep understanding of humanity, is genuinely unlike anything else I've read.
At the heart of this book is a sense of wandering, a search for something beyond the loss the speaker is facing. "It's late. And it always will be late. / Your small monument's atop its hillock / set with pennants that slap, slap, over the soil" (7). It's a digging, a rummaging, a constant look over the shoulder to see if what they're looking for is behind them. "The souls of the dead are the spirit of language: / you hear them alight inside that spoken thought" (32). And we, the reader, are allowed to experience this need to see beyond the grave, beyond the veil of death.
One of the most astonishing aspects of this book is the brutal honesty the speaker gives to the page. "Sorrow alone reveals a constant pulse" (58). "My living on indicts me. If my own heart / contracted briefly, it still pushed past yours" (53). There's something brutal about the confessional quality of these lines, not only because the speaker is implicating themselves in the sin of living on after a loved one has died, but also because we, the reader, are implicated as well. All life is implicated for the mere fact of being alive in the face of another life cut short.
I think the hardest part of this collection is that the conclusion doesn't offer solace. So often - too often - when we are grieving, we're made more and more aware with every day that passes how little the loss means to other people. "'Move on,' you hear, but to what howling emptiness? / The kinder place is closest to your dead" (56). The speaker is unable to move beyond their grief because it, the grief, is the last thing connecting them to the one who has died. Moving on would be a severing of that bond. "I can't quite leave the autopsy room for good" (53). The speaker may not physically be in the autopsy room or at the grave site, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally, they haven't left either place. They are almost buried with the dead body, and this was a disturbing - albeit completely relatable - place to end the book.
I think this is why the writing of this book didn't strike me more. I was so startled by the brutality of it all, I found it hard to see the beauty. It is strongly implied that the speaker lost a child; having had two miscarriages, I have tried very hard not to allow myself to get trapped in the grief, to lose myself to what I lost. The idea of willingly embracing that tide, embracing the depth of grief and weighing anchor there, was shocking to me as I read the end of this book. But as I look back over the quotes now, I see that it isn't a giving up on life that's taking place, which is what it seemed to be when I first read it. Instead, it's actually looking for that reason to keep living. And maybe the speaker just hasn't found that reason yet, but by being so close to the death, by staying so close to the dead, they're giving themselves a less painful life.
Moving on would mean a life without their child. Staying "in the autopsy room," as the speaker puts it, at least lessens the finality of such a blatant disconnect.
This is a complex book of poems that really cuts open what it means to grieve.
This book reproduces Riley's A Part Song, which is one of the most prolific long poems of our time. These lines examine what it means to be human at the most vulnerable level: when we lose someone we love. And I feel I say this in almost every book I review, but it never ceases to be true: while the content itself is not unique - examining the loss of loved ones - the way that Riley uses language to arrive at such a deep understanding of humanity, is genuinely unlike anything else I've read.
At the heart of this book is a sense of wandering, a search for something beyond the loss the speaker is facing. "It's late. And it always will be late. / Your small monument's atop its hillock / set with pennants that slap, slap, over the soil" (7). It's a digging, a rummaging, a constant look over the shoulder to see if what they're looking for is behind them. "The souls of the dead are the spirit of language: / you hear them alight inside that spoken thought" (32). And we, the reader, are allowed to experience this need to see beyond the grave, beyond the veil of death.
One of the most astonishing aspects of this book is the brutal honesty the speaker gives to the page. "Sorrow alone reveals a constant pulse" (58). "My living on indicts me. If my own heart / contracted briefly, it still pushed past yours" (53). There's something brutal about the confessional quality of these lines, not only because the speaker is implicating themselves in the sin of living on after a loved one has died, but also because we, the reader, are implicated as well. All life is implicated for the mere fact of being alive in the face of another life cut short.
I think the hardest part of this collection is that the conclusion doesn't offer solace. So often - too often - when we are grieving, we're made more and more aware with every day that passes how little the loss means to other people. "'Move on,' you hear, but to what howling emptiness? / The kinder place is closest to your dead" (56). The speaker is unable to move beyond their grief because it, the grief, is the last thing connecting them to the one who has died. Moving on would be a severing of that bond. "I can't quite leave the autopsy room for good" (53). The speaker may not physically be in the autopsy room or at the grave site, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally, they haven't left either place. They are almost buried with the dead body, and this was a disturbing - albeit completely relatable - place to end the book.
I think this is why the writing of this book didn't strike me more. I was so startled by the brutality of it all, I found it hard to see the beauty. It is strongly implied that the speaker lost a child; having had two miscarriages, I have tried very hard not to allow myself to get trapped in the grief, to lose myself to what I lost. The idea of willingly embracing that tide, embracing the depth of grief and weighing anchor there, was shocking to me as I read the end of this book. But as I look back over the quotes now, I see that it isn't a giving up on life that's taking place, which is what it seemed to be when I first read it. Instead, it's actually looking for that reason to keep living. And maybe the speaker just hasn't found that reason yet, but by being so close to the death, by staying so close to the dead, they're giving themselves a less painful life.
Moving on would mean a life without their child. Staying "in the autopsy room," as the speaker puts it, at least lessens the finality of such a blatant disconnect.
This is a complex book of poems that really cuts open what it means to grieve.
justprerna's review against another edition
4.0
This was everything I had hoped it would be. As a casual but dedicated student of grief, medicine and poetry, I felt myself cogitating over each verse multiple times. I will no doubt need to spend more time over this collection to actually understand and appreciate what Riley has accomplished here. I cannot wait to do so.