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A review by jessferg
Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay
3.0
This is the first time I've read Girmay so I can't compare this to her other works but simply comparing these poems to each other shows a broad range, but also some inconsistency, in her writing.
I am very drawn to her use of the natural world, particularly birds and other animals, to explain human life and emotion in these poems. Most interesting are the times when the words are familiar but together the reader is at a loss to define the meaning and is simply left with the intention and emotion. At the end of "They Tell Me You Are Gone" Girmay writes,
"...& we wake up wearing each other's clothes:
spider wearing my mouth like a room,..."
and all the meaning is tied up simply in what comes before and after, not in the actual sentence, despite it's jarring and beautiful construction and strange, if not actually imaginable, imagery. I doubt most poetry enthusiasts will be happy to hear this comparison, but it reminds me of Jeff Tweedy's poetry and the often construction of familiar words which just aren't supposed to go together. Girman's mastery at forcing a dawning comprehension on her reader is, however, more skilled.
Other poems contain phrases that feel like sudden breakthroughs. The clarity and simplicity stops the reader cold in an entirely different manner:
"All the songs you know are from a different country.
The fruits of your father's poems
do not grow here." - from "Portrait of the Woman as a Skein"
And these gems are worth any previous or prior struggles to decipher or translate Girmay's language.
The very first poem, and the book's title, was so moving that I read it and immediately put the book aside for the next two weeks:
The last stanza:
"I see a plant in the window of the house
my brother shares with his love, their shoes. & there
he is asleep in bed
with this same woman whose long skin
covers all of her bones, in a city called Oakland,
& their dreams hang above them
a little like a chandelier, & their teeth
flash in the night, oh, body.
Oh, body, be held now by whom you love.
Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars,
when dirt's the only animal who will sleep with you
& touch you with
its mouth."
Forgive my overly academic exclamation here but, holy shit. "...whose long skin covers all of her bones." That alone - wow.
I wouldn't recommend this for those simply dipping toes into poetry, per se, but I don't consider myself to have a huge breadth of poetry or interpretative skill and I still enjoyed this quite a bit. Give it a shot.
I am very drawn to her use of the natural world, particularly birds and other animals, to explain human life and emotion in these poems. Most interesting are the times when the words are familiar but together the reader is at a loss to define the meaning and is simply left with the intention and emotion. At the end of "They Tell Me You Are Gone" Girmay writes,
"...& we wake up wearing each other's clothes:
spider wearing my mouth like a room,..."
and all the meaning is tied up simply in what comes before and after, not in the actual sentence, despite it's jarring and beautiful construction and strange, if not actually imaginable, imagery. I doubt most poetry enthusiasts will be happy to hear this comparison, but it reminds me of Jeff Tweedy's poetry and the often construction of familiar words which just aren't supposed to go together. Girman's mastery at forcing a dawning comprehension on her reader is, however, more skilled.
Other poems contain phrases that feel like sudden breakthroughs. The clarity and simplicity stops the reader cold in an entirely different manner:
"All the songs you know are from a different country.
The fruits of your father's poems
do not grow here." - from "Portrait of the Woman as a Skein"
And these gems are worth any previous or prior struggles to decipher or translate Girmay's language.
The very first poem, and the book's title, was so moving that I read it and immediately put the book aside for the next two weeks:
The last stanza:
"I see a plant in the window of the house
my brother shares with his love, their shoes. & there
he is asleep in bed
with this same woman whose long skin
covers all of her bones, in a city called Oakland,
& their dreams hang above them
a little like a chandelier, & their teeth
flash in the night, oh, body.
Oh, body, be held now by whom you love.
Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars,
when dirt's the only animal who will sleep with you
& touch you with
its mouth."
Forgive my overly academic exclamation here but, holy shit. "...whose long skin covers all of her bones." That alone - wow.
I wouldn't recommend this for those simply dipping toes into poetry, per se, but I don't consider myself to have a huge breadth of poetry or interpretative skill and I still enjoyed this quite a bit. Give it a shot.