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REVIEW Alexis Pope, That Which Comes After, Big Lucks Books, 2018 |
That Which Comes After Alexis Pope's That Which Comes After is a chronicle and archive of everything that comes after, encompassing both afterglow and aftermath, without the heavy hand of nostalgia or indifference which could potentially rob the work of honest insight and emotionality. The poems can be read as individualized poems, sure, but the work can also be read as a book-length poem, a testament not only to the form of the book-length poem genre, but also to the cohesiveness of the voice as a whole. A reader could so easily ignore the titles, allowing the book a different kind of life on the page; however, it would be remiss to not mention that, individually with titles, the poems also have a dazzling, coherent, graceful life of their own. Whether read as a collection or a book-length work, the voice of the speaker seamlessly obfuscates, eviscerates, remonstrates, and celebrates that which comes after in our lives, both presently, in the past, and in the projection of potentiality of what could come after in the future.
and in "If I Take My Pill":
In these moments, like so many in the work, the language and lines enact the very essence of film and witness—be it picture or video—allowing the reader into a visual juxtaposition of documenting like that of bright blue with essence of monochrome or a montage sequence as if through a projector, one slide after the next, of captured moments, even if they, as the speaker says, should never be. Still, they are immortalized throughout within a documentary medium (video, photo, text) to act as a witness.
What Does Come After? And after what, exactly? Pope shows us the survival of what comes after an abusive relationship; suicide attempt(s)?; motherhood and miscarriage; loss of people, places, and things; the journey into maturity and adulthood; and even what can or should or does come after the minutiae of life—which can and will ultimately aid in saving us—such as hooking up with someone, cocktails, the Internet. It is the collocation of the enacting and documenting of the 'after' where the power of the poetry resides. For example, in the theme of an abusive relationship, the relationship of the I to the Other is explored in the revisiting, reimagining, living inside what comes after. In "What's the Saddest Song," the speaker says,
And in documenting moments where the expected is supposed to happen, we are encapsulated by losses and the absence of the other even when close. In "You Are Compared to Silence":
Through the investigation of the relationship, the I moves into an evolution of awareness of personhood, what has come after for her: "I think violence might be/more intimate but it's not," "Someplace new & without/A person I called my life," "You remind me how empty/Being covered can be," and "We exist in the ending for/Years rebuilt at our sides."
LOL (Haha Funny or Uncanny or Irony) While the heaviness of the 'after' seems bleak, there is so much humor and levity in this book which feels like relief, both for the reader and for the speaker, true to life itself. This humor can be found in individual lines, moments, and what can be read as titles such as "I Am So Reckless in These Five-Dollar Jeans," "Bookshelves Can Be Sexy," "We Banged Each Other's Others," and "I Want Everyone to Like Me So Hard." In "I Want Everyone to Like Me So Hard," the speaker says,
and in "I Mean There Are Specific":
and in "In Peacetime We Feel the Same As":
These places of levity are not few-and-far between, but arrive exactly when needed, to allow the reader (and the speaker) to be reminded of the multiplicity that every situation and occurrence in our lives contain, to give us permission to laugh at the absurdity, and to remember the lightness that can line every burden that the 'after' itself carries.
That Which Comes After: And They All Lived Happily Ever After (The End) By the end of the book, an awakening occurs—a personal and spiritual evolution of the speaker, a sense of growth and rebirth, of movement and making room for, and an acknowledgment that this evolution is only the beginning, a sense of thriving (and not just surviving) the 'after,' and the sense that, we, too, all of us, can thrive in our own 'after,' in whatever permutation it arrives for us. The speaker says, in "I've Lived Half Awake Before":
The reader (and the speaker/I) revels in a sense of closure and reassurance, even if the feeling is fleeting, as it is in life. Here, the final credits roll, and an ending (and beginning, which is the constant ouroboros we all face) will arrive in all of its glory, to teach and heal and pervade, and hopefully, triumph. Pope writes, in the final line, "Whatever you left with stays gone," and, we can only hope for this sentiment to be true. [KJS] |