 The Art of the Uncomfortable
Review: Pretend We Live Here Laura Kincaid Genevieve Hudson Fiction Future Tense Books, pp. 168 Paperback, $13 US Genevieve Hudson captures the comfortable in the uncomfortable. Her collection of short stories, Pretend We Live Here, centers on characters looking for home in places, in people, in their own bodies. No matter where her characters roam, readers are confronted with the violence inherent to existence through her sharp-edged but haunting, sometimes even joyful, prose.
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 The Other Side of the American Dream Review: Don't Call Us Dead Mikaela Langdon Danez Smith Poetry Graywolf Press Cost: $16.00 One aspect that makes poetry such a powerful form is how it is often used to tackle pertinent and even controversial topics. Race and sexuality are two timely issues, and Danez Smith tackles both of them in his book of poetry Don’t Call Us Dead. As a gay, black man in America, Smith has a unique perspective that shapes much of what he writes. In some ways, his poems speak to a very particular demographic and yet, they ring true for larger audiences.
In her debut poetry collection Glass Harvest (2016) Amie Whittemore unites all aspects of the universe: family, nature, farmland, music, and even the mythical and mysterious. It is full of surprises, moments of elation followed by moments of poignant grief, dark imagery juxtaposed with snapshots of beautiful, rural landscapes. With her poems, Whittemore celebrates the offbeat and unconventional, resulting in a collection of poems that mirror the chaos and unpredictability of family, both in form and content.
 Review: When I Was Straight Amanda Baldwin When I Was Straight Julie Marie Wade Poetry A Midsummer Night’s Press, pp. 48 Cost: $10.95 Julie Marie Wade’s chapbook When I Was Straight, a title that may lead a reader to expect poems about the transition between sexual identities, is actually largely heterosexually focused. Wade speaks openly about her experiences with men at the start of her sexual awakening, comparing her role as a woman to the ideal feminine condition society preaches, and in contrast to the feelings she had for other women in her life, even before she acted on them. Instead of appealing only to lesbians, the content of Wade’s poetry is extremely relatable for any woman who might not be entirely comfortable in the gender roles society has assigned to her or who is questioning her sexuality.
Feminism is not brought up explicitly, but it is an underlying thread that runs throughout the entire work, lending intensity to her emotions and the words she chooses to express herself. The old-fashioned way of looking at how a woman relates to a man still lingers, although women are doing their best to destroy the sad excuses for the lack of progress, as displayed in the helplessness shown in Wade’s poem “There Was a Man in the Moon”: “The woman did not know how to work/the lawnmower, & the man did not know/how to work the microwave.” This presentation of a woman’s skills in the home versus a man’s know-how may have had a seed of truth in it once upon a time, but now women are freer to learn everything they want about the world. Women are also allowed to pursue careers and hobbies rather than just getting married and having children. Wade’s poem “It Was a Shame” brings up what girls are still not taught—how to be a sexual woman, like Wade was while figuring out her sexuality: “It was a shame. It was a phase. / It was a secret. / I wanted every man I met. / I courted danger on the dance floor.” Even before she was thinking about engaging another young lady in bedroom activities, Wade’s perceived promiscuous nature was looked down upon by society in general as unseemly. Girls going through puberty and experiencing hormones and sexual attraction for the first time are understandably confused about what is happening to their bodies and minds during this time and why they want new things, and they must be taught the truth in order to stay healthy. |
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