2024-09-12
Davis probes failed relationships, homophobia, and sexism in these searing poems.
The 129 poems collected here explore the hells that we can endure with other people. Many deal with the author’s affairs with other women, which entail pleasurable pain (“I like bruises on my arms / And hands around my neck”), ravaging mental abuse (“I’ve run out of words to tell you, / The pain I feel from the things that you do”), and post-breakup contempt (“I felt so depleted, so worn down, / I was in a garden with a parasite”). Several pieces address antagonistic family dynamics, including a father’s domineering behavior (“You’re Daddy’s little girl, /…Make sure to smile and giggle / At all his unfunny jokes. / Make sure not to complain / When you feel his pokes”). Relatives’ refusals to accept the poet’s sexuality provoke a broadside of almost biblical fury (“As you take your six pieces of silver all the way to hell with you / You Judas, may God bless your mediocre soul”). Other poems take aim at patriarchy, seething at “This cold and gentry life / As a carcéral officer’s wife / The life of every woman in America,” and at pandemic measures as a marker of alienation (“Socially distance— / Six feet apart— / But how far apart are we spiritually”). Davis’ confessional verse is unashamedly self-revealing, even self-lacerating, as it plumbs the depths of pain and rejection. Her poems depict powerful, sometimes harsh feelings conveyed in arresting language and apt metaphors; they are often bleak and plangent (“Where were you when you realized that no one truly cares about anyone else? / This world is so much colder than it ever feels— / I can’t tell where my cigarette smoke ends and my frosted breath begins”), and at other times lyrical in hymning the union of hearts (“Like the ocean and the sand— / They meet briefly, / Moment after moment”). The result is a resonant journey through anguish and healing.
An intense exploration of love, betrayal, and self-acceptance that packs a Plathian emotional wallop.
