Sundress Reads: Review of Dead Uncles

I’ve read many poetry books written by Southern and Appalachian authors, and I can confidently say that Ben Kline’s chapbook, Dead Uncles (Driftwood Press, 2021), is fifty-one pages of some of the most painfully beautiful, goosebump-raising writing sourced straight from the hollers of Appalachia. In these pages, readers will walk across the land of not just the dead, but those walking beautiful, often painful lives. Through Kline’s sharp words, anyone can learn about the magic of blood ties, family origins, and the special connection such ideas share. 

Set against the backdrop of a community in the throes of addiction and loss, many of the poems in the collection ruminate on death and identity. In “Dead at 46,” Kline writes about the inevitability of the end: 

If I die that Wednesday afternoon– 
another distant uncle gone– 
I hope it doesn’t hurt, 
hope I hover embryonic, 
a meteoric ghost burning up 
no closer to heaven. (21)

Like shears, Kline’s harshly vivid descriptions tear through the fibers of what it means to truly live while also trying to survive and prepare for the end. Every uncle, including the “distant uncle” in “Dead at 46,” is a mirror for the speaker to look into, a reflection of true familial experience, be it 100% factual or slightly exaggerated for the sake of its poetic purpose. In these poems, readers will find unedited people reduced to their very core, and a speaker who dares to tell their stories.  

The theme of queerness is another axis on which these poems spin; the poem “Will / Inherit,” is a prime example of how Kline explores this: “Suddenly / late summer / shirtless in the loft / he watches me / surmount the top rug / Soft timothy exhaling June / The twine breaks / spreading blue / purple florets on which we lie” (9). The use of colors in this poem spark images in the reader’s mind, pulling us into the speaker’s own world of sexual desire and companionship. The poem ends with the speaker pondering the “silver rings my nephews will inherit / as we leave / behind nothing.” I would argue that the title’s reference to inheritance, which is revisited at the end of the poem, could also be read as an inheritance of struggle for LGBTQ+ people. What we leave behind as individuals are not just physical things like rings, but also the intangible, the fight for our rights, for safety, to be seen and heard. We leave behind the wondering, hoping that two men holding hands in public will one day be safe. 

Although this collection exists as its own little regional ecosystem, universal ideas are relayed in nearly every poem. Take “Be Prepared,” for example, a poem that uses a hungered robin and an earthworm to describe the desperation of survival. Kline writes, “In the bluegrass an earthworm thrashes / toward God,” and “Home, I splash cold water on my face / and check the packed bag / under the bed” (16). The natural cycle of the food chain echoes the speaker’s preparedness throughout the entirety of the collection, which takes form in literal acts of preparation for death and in preparing other things, like a concoction of ingredients to conjure past lovers. These lines from “Giving Up the Dew” stand out as an example: “Once home repeat those lovers’ names / three times as you drool / your weed cup into the second / and fifth cups. Wash your hands” (12). With every poem, there is something to be said about how Kline uses simplistic poetic forms to explore the complicated intersectionality of fatalism, queerness, and rural life alongside connective thematic threads, such as identity exploration and love.   

The final poem in the collection, “Corpse Reviver,” is a summation of the pain and love that this collection embodies as it pulls us back to uncles: 

uncle Rick counting pills, placing them
in neat rows. No amount of knowing 
changes the outcome: dead uncles
blue in the face, red 
leaving their lips. (Kline 29)

Kline’s colorful, tragic words here are an ode to the uncles that have come and gone, those too soon and others not soon enough. What the reader sees here is not just a tragic ending, but a reminder that no matter what is experienced throughout one’s life, there is only one way in which things truly end. Much like its last poem, Dead Uncles is a reunion—a place where the dead, the living, memory, folklore, and daydreams collide. If there’s one place where all of these family members, and especially these uncles, will live forever, it is in these poems. Anyone from anywhere can read this collection and walk away having felt it in their bones.

Dead Uncles is available from Driftwood Press

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Leo Coffey is a trans fiction writer born and raised in Southern Appalachia. His stories engage with class distinctions, rural life, gender identity and sexuality, and the tension between memory and reality. He earned his BA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Asheville. His work has appeared in Still: The Journal, Appalachian Review, and Dead Mule. He is the fiction co-editor for Reckon Review.