A review by amaldae
Life in a Box is a Pretty Life by Dawn Lundy Martin

4.0

How rare to finish a book of poetry on the same day it is started. How rare, then, to return to it immediately. This is something I wish to internalize and then spit out again (if possible); resolutely depressing, yet begging to be heard the world over.

I'm not making much sense, am I? I hope this is not making you-the-collective-of-potential-readers afraid, the box being more than references, and knowable to all. I think? (but at root, black, and queer, and most familiar to bodies deemed female.)

To be in memory, destructive impulses,

a worship in the side room of the mind.

--

Survival skills liturgy:

Except, who was taken? We want to imagine our connections like sweet water.

Except, the possibility of complete missingness of the person. [...]

Sometimes, in spite of myself, the word, God.

A book is nothing, they say.

A want to theorize this phrase but then flesh just gone.

Tisa tells me about the coming dirt shortage.
(p. 51)


I wish I could do it more justice - & say things other than modern poetry really, really isn't so intimidating once the right collection is found. I wish someone hesistant out there will give this one a chance. But you kind of knew that already.