This is my once yearly foray into poetry. Always inspired by National Poetry Month (April), but in this case taking me almost to the end of May to finish. This was a "read one or two poems at a time" kind of collection (or even a "read each poem two times" kind of collection), in order to really ingest them, so it was an intellectual and emotional investment over time. One that I found worth it. And though I am sure I didn't take away nearly as much as one could from these poems, what I did get was big.

Y'all. This collection was stunning. In the colloquial "amazing" sense and in the more literal "I felt physically/emotionally stunned" by it. From the opening, titular, poem, the juxtaposition of violence and wounds with the aspects of the earth/land, evoked through color and connections/desire was absolutely breathtaking (again, colloquially and literally). Diaz brings the land to life in these pages, literarily and anthropomorphicallyThere is so much gorgeous play of form and color and word combinations/vocabulary that was deeply evocative. "Skin-Light" was a standout for me, on that front. And "Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" was an actual master class in metaphor. My god. I also loved "Asterions' Lament" and "How the Milky Way Was Made" for the feelings they pulled from me. And I appreciated "The First Water Is the Body" quite a bit, as I felt like it brought together everything that is this collection - themes and language - unequivocally and beautifully, with immediacy and grace at the same time. The language throughout is just...wow. Diaz's grasp of the way language moves, and the breadth of her vocabulary, is so impressive. It felt, to me, like this is the poetry version of the writing in This is How You Lose the Time War (or vice versa depending on which you read first), in the way that it elicits emotions, but in a way that feels just out of reach. Ephemeral and vivid. 

This collection is haunting and righteously angry in the way it calls out and sheds light and does not soften or back down from the tragic/violent (in ways that are systemic, historical, ever present, desirous/sexual). Yet it manages to do so with truly stunning, painful beauty in the interplay of words and imagery and conceptualization. T

here is sorrow and tragedy here, of land and body and family (especially brother), but there is also love, of land (color and animal and plant) and body (joy in sexual and romantic connection). Just, so so much feeling in these poems: a heaviness, a magic of words that feels both present and just beyond the reader's grasp. Wow.

“the war never ended and somehow begins again.” (Postcolonial Love Poem)

“beneath the hip and plow of my lover, / then I am another night wandering the desire field -" (From the Desire Field)

“If you are where you are, then where / are those who are not here? Not here.” (Manhattan Is a Lenape Word)

“…But it’s hard, isn’t it? Not to perform / what they say about our sadness, when we are / always so sad. It is real work not to perform / a fable…” (Like Church)

“They are only light because we are dark. / If we didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be long before / they had to invent us…” (Like Church)

“The water we drink, like the air we breathe, is not a part of our body but is our body. What we do to one - to the body, to the water - we do to the other.” (The First Water Is the Body)

“I know what it’s like to be appetite of your own appetite, / citizen of what savages you” (I, Minotaur)

“Let us say to one another: I am yours - / and know finally that we will only ever be / as much as we are willing to save of one another.” (exhibits from The American Water Museum)

“What we hold grows weight, / becomes enough or a burden.” (Isn’t the Air Also a Body, Moving?)

“What is a page if not a lingering, an opaque / waiting - to be marked, and written?” (Snake-Light)

“To write is to be eaten. To read, to be full.” (Snake-Light)