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julianna_schock's review
5.0
Eliot Khalil Wilson, native to Virginia but a resident in Alabama, really knows how to capture an atmosphere by describing its people. Poems like 1CThe Black-Shawled Widows of Castilla y Leon 1D which focuses only on these widows, paints a gorgeous picture of Latin American culture. He manages to blend Syria and Damascus with Clearview, West Virginia in poems like 1CSyrian Light and the Leisure of Moths 1D and does so not to compensate for a sense of internationality, but because it works and because the brilliance of the poem led him to be able to weave together such different cultures. Really what Wilson is fascinated with the most is the idea that no matter where we are, Russia, Brazil, New Orleans, or Birmingham, we all experience similar things. We all are spiritual. We all suffer. We all work hard to reach our goals. We all experience sexuality. We all have desires. And his poems all center around this idea of similar experiences, but he stays away from unity. Many poems, like 1CElegy for the Twice-Invisible Body of Jesus Blanco 1D and 1CGinsberg 19s Ghost: Atlantic City 1D speak of people, whether they 19re a Hispanic immigrant or a Catholic school girl or a boy playing war and eventually dying in one, and each person feels a disconnect; they suffer because ultimately they are alone. And even though the idea of a school girl becoming a sex symbol is overused or the idea of a little boy losing his innocence in war is a typical poem topic, Wilson makes you remember these characters. He doesn 19t let you forget Jesus Blanco or Earl or Ms. America. He tells their story in a way that surpasses casual forgetting.
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