Rage Hezekiah

I FUCKING LOVED THIS COLLECTION.

Listen, I have been reading and reviewing (even if mostly just for myself) poetry for decades now and I still don't feel like I can adequately describe or even understand why one poet over another just RESONATES with my soul. Why one collection I read and think "this is very good," and the next makes me want to do some all-caps screaming on the internet.

Around the beginning of the year I was thinking that I wanted/needed more unread poetry on my shelves, and I was going through some of my old poetry reviews because I know there are collections I have finished thinking I WANT TO READ EVERYTHING ELSE THIS POET WRITES EVER but then I am terrible at following up. Well, I read my review for Hezekiah's previous collection, Unslakable, where I said pretty much exactly that, so I investigated whether she had anything new out, and was delighted to discover and immediately bought this.

Can I say first, this book is really beautiful? Not just the cover image, which is lovely, but the cover is a textured matte paper, and the dimensions leave lots of white space on the page, which I like in a poetry collection.

Hezekiah knocked my socks off with the very first poem, "Consent," which contrasts an awkward, performative sex act with a boy in her teens, with an experience with a woman in her twenties founded on affirmative consent. For a collection entitled yearn, it is a smashing beginning, as Hezekiah explores the boundaries of desire and want, not just sexual, but for food, for sensation, for dissolution, for reconciliation, for pregnancy. Throughout there are mentions of therapists, meditation teachers, guides, urging Hezekiah to let go of rage, of wanting. These are poems that both own their desires and try to make peace with those unfulfilled.

These poems address queerness, Blackness, the generational legacy of a parenting style that attempted to beat children into submission. They find joy in the change of seasons, in sex, in the quiet ritual of tea.

I don't know what to tell you I just love her.… (plus d'informations)

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and how was I to say no to a book with that cover? Plus, it's from Paper Nautilus Press, and we tiny presses with marine invertebrates for logos need to stick together!

I really enjoyed this small collection. The poems are biographical for the most part, and witness intersections of trauma and fear, but also joy and magical thinking and resilience. Hezekiah navigates the world as a queer woman of color whose parents were given to fits of rage, but also someone who makes out in a walk-in cooler, who dissects owl pellets, who smokes joints with her mom.

A poet whose name I will keep an eye out for in the future.… (plus d'informations)