Raven Raves, Rants, Reviews and Listings
Review of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Contest Winner for 2003:
Kelli Russell Agodon’s Geography
Review by Jeannine Hall Gailey
The winning chapbooks of the annual Floating Bridge Press chapbook contest are reliably readable, and this year’s winner is no exception. A heart-wrenching and intimate 16-poem collection from young Kingston poet Kelli Russell Agodon is full of unexpected, elemental images and astute observations about the nature of how we deal with the betrayal we feel with our bodies when they fail us. The collection travels with the speaker from her first premonitions of her illness through her diagnosis and treatment. The themes of this chapbook, indicated by the title, include the juxtaposing of the geography of the female body before, during, and after breast cancer and the geography of the world, and this juxtaposition makes for some tremendously effective metaphors, especially in the final two poems. Minor themes creep into the short collection as well. Whimsical poems about bible stories, such as “After My Last Chemo Appointment I Steal Page Six of the Children’s Illustrated Book of Bible Stories” and “Eve Becomes the Apple Tree,” serve as points of hope and also as meditations on the nature of mortality and faith. Other poems, like the opening poem “Beginnings” and “What the Wind Brings” address the sinister side of nature and the environment.
Agodon’s free-verse style is spare and lyrical, with flashes of subtle humor, like this example from “Not Necessarily Cancer:”
“My life was small like the complimentary peanuts,
the packet of cheese, the tiny prayer
that came with the meal.”
Throughout her chapbook, Agodon manages to evoke strong emotion without crossing the line into melodrama or tear-jerking, and makes the speaker’s experiences universal by having the speaker look outward towards her universe, which includes waxwings, clematis, local and foreign landscapes, and ultimately, God (or gods.) The final two poems of the book are some of the finest and most moving in the chapbook; they have a detached sense of drama that is highly compelling. “The Mission Bell of Haiti” deals obliquely with the issue of mastectomy, while the title poem, “Geography,” deals with it directly. These two poems help us share the speaker’s sense of loss and the acceptance of loss. A few lines from the “Mission Bell of Haiti” demonstrate this:
“You walked the same land for years,
until the horizon quivered…
Remind me how you loved
the mission. With most of it gone,
you look to the iron bell,
place your hand against stone,
feel the heart that still beats as strong,
though only one side remains.”
It is definitely worth taking your time to read each poem in this collection, since each contains a startling revelation or metaphor. I found the entire chapbook rewarding and challenging, a combination of styles and tones ranging from ironic detachment to stark heartbreak to victorious imagistic flourish. I am looking forward to a full-length collection from Agodon in the future to see how she will stretch herself and more fully develop the themes begun in Geography.
(See http://www.scn.org/arts/floatingbridge/ for information on purchasing this collection.)
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Jeannine Hall Gailey is a Seattle-area writer of magazine articles, poetry, and other non-fiction work. She has a Master's Degree in English from the University of Cincinnati and has had work published in the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Melic Review, Northwest Palate Magazine, and other places. She has a poem in the upcoming issue of the Seattle Review and also happens to be the web editor of the Raven Chronicles site. Visit her site at www.webbish6.com or feel free to contact her at webbish6@hotmail.com or jeannine@ravenchronicles.org..