Review: Tell This to the Universe

Seeing the Universe as a Question, Rather than a Thing
Review: Tell This to the Universe

Alexa Diamant

Katie Prince
Poetry Collection
YesYes Books, pp. 110
Cost: $18.00

Have you ever found yourself in the position of talking out loud to yourself all the while hoping some external force can hear you? Maybe there’s a motive behind talking out loud, maybe, just maybe someone or something is listening. In Tell This to the Universe, Katie Prince delves into the deeply human desire to impose order on the world through knowledge. She combines science, mathematics, astronomy, and language as metaphors for our intellectual attempts to understand the universe. Yet, running through these poems is a countercurrent of chaos, reflected in her stream-of-consciousness style, which suggests that while we seek answers, both the cosmos and our own minds resist such clear-cut resolutions.

Katie Prince’s debut poetry collection, Tell This to the Universe, offers an exploration of the cosmos and the conscience, both of which she portrays as perpetually mysterious and largely uncontrollable. Her poems invite readers into a realm where familiar topics—ranging from history and philosophy to nature and science—are re-examined through an existential lens, prompting us to question what we think we know. Prince’s inspiration from the Nordic Monastery, Klaustrið, fills the collection with a contemplative quality, as though each line is a meditation on the hidden layers of language, culture, and personal experience. This setting seems to shape her poetic voice, infusing her work with a sense of isolation and wonder that urges readers to consider the limits of understanding across linguistic and cultural barriers. As she navigates themes of isolation, connection, and the intangible aspects of human life, Prince’s work becomes an invitation to embrace uncertainty and to marvel at the vast, unknowable expanse that lies both within and beyond us.

Throughout the book, is it notable to mention the poems are sectioned off and employ a stream-of-consciousness writing style. This connects the chaotic flow of thoughts to the unreliable mystery of the cosmos. The lack of contextual clarity in poems such as “we call man an insect infinite,” “dark matter,” and “what this lacks is understanding” contribute to the cluttered disorder of pining for answers in a world that’s completely unpredictable. Through these poems, Prince explores how everything is open to interpretation, a paradox, if you will. These paradoxical elements can be found abundantly throughout the book, but her most notable use of them can be found in “dark matter” when she writes: 

via flickr by Brenda Clarke

and always the thought
 of you, usually as a man. sometimes 
a bear or glacier or black black ocean
…
I don’t know
how to reach you, and wondering
takes up all my time. (Lines 4-6, 19-21)

The overarching paradox seems to be the tension between presence and absence, knowing and not knowing, control and the uncontrollable. Prince’s attempts to understand and reach the “you” are met with the vast unknown—symbolized by dark matter—which resists definition and comprehension. 

Prince beautifully weaves in elements of science and astronomy to offer comfort in the face of the unknown, providing a crutch to hold onto when everything else feels unsteady. Using facts to question the unanswered is a bold and indicative technique, underscoring the importance of challenging and twisting what is recognizable. Prince frequently confronts her own mortality while grappling with a deep discomfort of the human body. In “we call man an insect infinite” Prince creates several paradoxes around the human experience, particularly the struggle to define oneself within a broken, decaying form. She writes:

I slid the bone
fragment against the edge
of my desk, laid it down to
decompose. I am afraid to dispose
of my skull. we might call this
molting, or building
a new self out of unusable
parts
…
we call man a broken
down machine. (Lines 49-56, 61-62)

Prince’s relationship with her own body is complex, involving both detachment and deep introspection. This duality of being both within and outside oneself, simultaneously human and less than human, is at the heart of the poem’s existential questioning.

Prince’s stream-of-consciousness style aptly reflects the fragmented and chaotic aspects of existence. Rather than resolving these complexities, her poetry allows uncertainty to linger, challenging readers to reconcile with the unknown. By placing the indescribable at the forefront, she creates a space where meaning becomes fluid and reality blurs with imagination. Her work invites an active engagement with ambiguity, urging readers to find depth not in what is stated but in the spaces left undefined. In doing so, Prince opens a dialogue between the reader and the text, transforming the act of reading into a journey of discovery.

Reading this collection sparked a melancholic response in me, inspiring a shift in how I view existence. Prince draws parallels between human metacognition and the instinctive survival of animals, contrasting our constant questioning with their freedom from existential crises. Through her poems, she conveys both the burden and the beauty of being human, navigating life’s uncertainties with a quiet yearning for purpose. Tell This to the Universe invites readers into a rich, intricate exploration of existence that resonates with both observation and chaos. By engaging with themes of loss, desire, and the ungraspable nature of reality, Prince’s poetry captivates the imagination and encourages us to embrace the profound questions that linger in life’s uncertainties. I highly recommend this collection to anyone drawn to introspective, philosophical works that grapple with the complexities of human existence.