Hi everyone!
I don’t even know how many times I tried writing this anymore, but the last weeks have been busier than busy, and this isn’t a review I can or want to write half-heartedly.
I’ve been following Taylor Byas on Twitter and reading (and loving) her works for a while now, reason why I’m especially grateful to Variant Lit for providing me with this chapbook, but also why my expectations were already pretty high to begin with.
And I’m so so excited to say that I wasn’t disappointed. I dread starting a new book from an author I love because I expect them to be perfect—or as close to perfect as I imagine them to be—but in this case it was just as good as I thought, so I’m especially happy about it.
Now, my first instinct is saying just a series of WowWowWowWow, because it’s probably the easiest and fastest way to communicate my thoughts, but I’m told it’s not the most eloquent one, so I’m going to be a bit more detailed.
As always, I must say I love the cover. The shiny, golden drops are especially cute. But what’s inside is even better. Taylor Byas’s poems are so deep and insightful, at times I felt moved. She has an incredible mastery of language, so much so that even poems with few metaphors or images are a pleasure to read, and express beautiful images anyway.
Her work is deeply rooted in the USA culture, in particular in the racism that permeates the country and the people, so much so that at times it was hard for me to understand, and I had to search for a few things online (had no idea who Madam C.J. Walker or Mike Espy were). Not only I’m white, but also I live in Italy and have never been to the USA.
I’m not going to say that there’s no racism in Italy, but from what I read and hear it’s a different kind from the one in the USA. The chapbook prompted me to ask an Indian friend about it, and he also said that, apart from the occasional racist person, what’s found in Italy is especially xenophobia, people scared of the different, which sometimes may be the skin colour, but more often is a different language or culture. [Quick geography/history(?) lesson: Italy is placed on the Mediterranean Sea, which means people from Africa and the Middle East came here since forever, so it’s not uncommon, especially in the south, finding black Italians whose families have been here for centuries– and people don’t really notice. Now, I’m not the right person to talk about racism or lack-there-of in Italy, but this is just to say that I can’t understand at a deeper level what some of these poems talk about.]
—And yet Taylor Byas makes me feel what happens in such an emotional way, so much so that at times I’m horrified by what’s happening, and yet I have to keep reading. People ask me how can I still be horrified by things in my everyday life when my comfort show is Criminal Minds—well, the show can be cruel or whatever, but it’s just a show, while reading these things, and knowing they actually happen, is terrifying.
The author expresses her life and her struggles through small moments that may look insignificant in any other situation, but they never are with her: at the gas station, in front of a classroom, at a museum or eating in a diner. And while we’re living those moments with her through the whole poem, at the end she hits us with a couple of lines that cut our breath short and make us stop to reflect on it all. I absolutely love having to read a poem multiple times to understand all the nuances hidden in there, and all the way every single word is adding to the overall message.
Taylor Byas is also a master in using repetitions making it sound new every time, which is something I believe extremely hard to do. In particular, I adore how she uses this in I Don’t Care If Mary Jane Gets Saved Or Not, Hypothetically Speaking, October Spell in Indiana, and Pulled Over, which coincidentally are among my favourite poems in this volume.
Some of my favourite lines.
From You’re It:
[…] You are a fawn then, your jelly legged steps to test the soil, the split-
second freeze when suddenly the girls reappear for a different game, yipping into the night, open-
mouthed—a flashlight shining into your eyes, your back kissing the ground, a bounty on your head.
From On Being A Black Instructor:
[…]
Then I’ll be mirror, I’ll be mime, the fox
they lost the trail on, with the perfect hiding spot.
From October Spell in Indiana:
[…] The flames
snap like a wishbone pulled between my
two fists in childhood. I cross myself—
Lord cover me in your blood. Let me—
[…]
I’m not going to write down any more lines I like to avoid having the whole chapbook on here, but you get my point. It’s all amazing.
And I’m not sure what else to add, except a recommendation to read every poem from Taylor Byas you come across!