This collection - whew - some of it delighted me: Girl, Ode to the Women on Long Island, Ode to Pink ("my favorite color is Pepto Bismol"), Staying Small, The Sandias, 2008. Others were too dark even for me who gravitates to bleak literature. Worth hand picking. ( )

I'm a massive Olivia Gatwood fan, and this book is no exception. It voices the fears and experiences of so many women, and she tackles violence against women in a lyrical and poignant way. I'd say that her poems are much more impactful spoken, though, and I would recommend listening to them on YouTube. ( )

Oh this collection is dark! But so good. I didn't find much personal resonance in it but I love the way she arranges words. ( )

Law & Order: SVU meets the Button Poetry YouTube channel

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence against women, including rape.)

If you have a son, how will you love him?
She is pacing the living room,
while the Thanksgiving Day Parade
plays behind her, a montage of inflated
cartoon bodies, floating slow
down 6th Avenue, smiles
painted onto their faces.

I consider not responding.
I consider explaining that I can love him and not trust him. I consider saying that I won’t
love him at all. Just to scare her. Instead, I say,

If I am ever murdered, like,
body found in a ditch, mouth
stuffed with dirt, stocking
around my neck, identified
by my toenails, please don’t go
looking for a guilty woman.

("My Grandmother Asks Why I Don't Trust Men")

***

16. Laughter is not about humor,
it is about acknowledging a shared joy.
Laughter is about bonding.

EXAMPLE: WHEN I HEAR MEN LAUGHING,
I DO NOT ENTER THE ROOM.
I CRAWL HOME IN THE DARK.

("Mans/Laughter")

***

Aileen, I wish I could’ve taken you there.
It’s too late now. I wish you hadn’t hurt all those people.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know you hate it when I say that,
what I meant was that I wish all those people hadn’t hurt you.

("Aileen Wuornos Isn't My Hero")

***

In the Author's Note, Gatwood writes at length about her obsession with true crime shows, and the resulting - if paradoxical - feelings of fear and control they instilled in her:

"I want to believe that the motivation behind most true crime is to bring to light the epidemic of women’s murder worldwide, to use nonfiction storytelling as a method of illuminating a clear pattern. But I don’t believe that. If that were true, it wouldn’t focus on crimes committed by random strangers, and instead would reveal the much more common perpetrators: men whom these women knew and often loved. If true crime were truly mission-oriented, it would focus on the cases that are not explicitly perverse and shocking, the ones that are familiar, fast, and happen at home. If true crime sought to confront the reality of violence against women, it would not rely so heavily on fear-mongering narratives of cisgender white girls falling victim to men of color."

Life of the Party: Poems is a reaction to these shows, and the culture that spawned them. The same culture that taught her to fear men, and her own body. These poems are about crimes true and fictionalized; about violence against women, in all its forms: physical, sexual, psychological; violences so conspicuous that they are impossible to ignore, as well as the "smaller" insults called microaggressions. Gatwood identifies and names these things, embodies them in her verse, gives them life in her words - all so that she may eviscerate them with the same.

Gatwood's poems are at at once stirring and despondent; beautiful and cutting (not that the two are mutually exclusive!); fierce and feminist AF. Life of the Party is both a memoir and a cultural history; some of the loveliest and most heartbreaking poems are those which incorporate actual headlines from real-life cases: "Murder of a Little Beauty" (JonBenet Ramsey), "Body Count: 13" (the West Mesa murders). Aileen Wuornos is present in so many of these verses, even when she is just passing through, like a visitor in the night.

There are odes to the women of Long Island ("when I show them the knife I carry in my purse, tell me it’s not big enough"), bitchface ("resting bitch face, they call you but there is nothing restful about you, no"), unpaid electricity bills, and a lover's left hand. Woven throughout the named poems is an untitled, serialized piece about Gatwood's babysitter, the cool older girl who, by book's end, either overdosed - or was killed by her abuser, depending on your POV.

Yet, as bleak and depressing as many of these poems are/can be, Life of the Party ends on hopeful notes: "All of the Missing Girls are Hanging Out Without Us," having a grand old time (surprise!) and, "In the Future, I Love the Nighttime," thanks to the virus that did away with all the violent-minded men in the world. (Turns out the apocalypse is just peachy!)

http://www.easyvegan.info/2019/08/27/life-of-the-party-poems-by-olivia-gatwood/ ( )