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A review by genrejourneys
Far District: Poems by Ishion Hutchinson
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
4.0
(Gifted an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)
Myth, madness, and the swallowing past all shape Far District: Poems, Ishion Hutchinson's debut poetry collection. In a rough narrative, we follow a speaker (The Prodigal in "New World Frescoes", I and You in many others), journeying from a childhood past in Jamaica to a present across the sea.
Hutchinson's voice, at its best, pulses with a mixture of the divine and disgust, often in awe at the natural and literary and struggling with the humans, though there too creeps in love. Lines like "tuned to the blue/ above and below" and "I know rivers the way I know hate" evoke such clear reactions, ironically often of very messy feelings. "A Small Pantheon" and "Doris at the River" were favorites for me from the collection.
Occasionally a line feels too blunt and some poems commit so much to the narrative that the more abstract poems feel more out of place as a result. But I can already see how a reread, armed with Hutchinson's notes at the end, could be particularly rewarding.
Myth, madness, and the swallowing past all shape Far District: Poems, Ishion Hutchinson's debut poetry collection. In a rough narrative, we follow a speaker (The Prodigal in "New World Frescoes", I and You in many others), journeying from a childhood past in Jamaica to a present across the sea.
Hutchinson's voice, at its best, pulses with a mixture of the divine and disgust, often in awe at the natural and literary and struggling with the humans, though there too creeps in love. Lines like "tuned to the blue/ above and below" and "I know rivers the way I know hate" evoke such clear reactions, ironically often of very messy feelings. "A Small Pantheon" and "Doris at the River" were favorites for me from the collection.
Occasionally a line feels too blunt and some poems commit so much to the narrative that the more abstract poems feel more out of place as a result. But I can already see how a reread, armed with Hutchinson's notes at the end, could be particularly rewarding.