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A review by smblanc1793
Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens by Corey Van Landingham
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
4.5
When the planets collide and their pinball trajectories when the panic of geese breaks up the sky like a brick through the window how can I not think we are doomed?
This collection paints the world in a sort of ominous beauty that would be as harrowing as it is stunning if it weren’t also…surprisingly charming.
Many of these poems are about war or fear or uncertainty, and yet the collection starts with a severed statue hand flipping the bird. That’s the energy I need in my poems. There is no need for this collection to take itself too seriously, simply because no one in their right mind could come away believing Van Landingham anything less than a master of her craft. It weaves the personal and historical so intricately that it’s impossible to distinguish between them. In fact, it makes me feel a little daft for ever thinking of them as separate at all.
Many of these poems are about war or fear or uncertainty, and yet the collection starts with a severed statue hand flipping the bird. That’s the energy I need in my poems. There is no need for this collection to take itself too seriously, simply because no one in their right mind could come away believing Van Landingham anything less than a master of her craft. It weaves the personal and historical so intricately that it’s impossible to distinguish between them. In fact, it makes me feel a little daft for ever thinking of them as separate at all.
In the collection’s titular poem, Van Landingham writes that,
A word, freed from the lips, is in the air a trespass.
And though that may be true many places. For me, all of these words are welcome ones.