Sundress Reads: Review of Songs for the Land-Bound

Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press), Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s debut poetry collection, is an illuminating reflection of modern life. Garcia-Mendoza explores the depths of relationship—as child, parent, and lover. Bundled into each poem is a need for survival, as well as the pursuit of it, incessant and binding. The collection is simultaneously tight and far-reaching, continuously wondering about the whys of humanity and attempting to answer them. Songs for the Land-Bound moves through six different sections, each very contained yet essential to the entirety of the book. There are birds and ghosts, there is absence and hollowness. There is self-exploration and quiet rumination—everything a reader could ask for from a poet.

Garcia-Mendoza’s first poem, “Nocturne,” immediately identifies the speaker and her partner as “flightless” and “land-bound” (1). An illustrious and vivid opening, Nocturne indicates that the collection is one of love and everything it contains—including the darkness that comes with it, draped in the shadows of night. Birds make their entrance in this initial piece, an image that continues to flutter in and out of view as they are “steered south by stars or specks of magnetite” (Garcia-Mendoza 1). Lines such as “tonight / the past becomes us” and “Love might be elsewhere, otherwise,” stay nestled in my mind, delicately contemplative (Garcia-Mendoza 1). After enjoying all one-hundred and six pages, this poem still stands valiantly as my favorite within the collection.

Each section works through a portion of the speaker’s life, whether it be loneliness or motherhood. Two particularly captivating poems, almost thirty pages apart, demonstrate the speaker’s relationships with her parents and, likely, the identities she has now determined for herself and her husband. First, she emphasizes the strained relationship with their father becomes apparent in a beautiful poem in “A Dozen New Collective Nouns for Fathers.” Garcia-Mendoza utilizes wordplay, depicting: “a stable a stumble a stubble” (17). Later on, “A Dozen New Collective Nouns for Mothers” is much more peaceful, its parallel wordplay tinged with compassion: “a kindred a kettle a knowing” (Garcia-Mendoza 42). The entire poem serves as a testament to the positive connotation the speaker associates with motherhood. This definition faces opposition, however, as the speaker herself endures motherhood.

Garcia-Mendoza’s stunning language when discussing topics such as the Internet and Minecraft is nothing short of astounding, grasping modern concepts and putting a literary spin on them. Technology is a pertinent feature of the collection from the very beginning. In Blank Canvas, contemporary priorities are emphasized: “the gods you keep / close: children, iPhone, birdsong, water” (Garcia-Mendoza 4). This list gives readers a glimpse into what Garcia-Mendoza values, including technology. Later, she references moments of endless doom-scrolling that readers can, most likely, relate to. Yet she does so in a way that transcends modern associations with technology and truly involves profound reflectivity: “The doom scroll says any animal can become / a casualty” (Garcia-Mendoza 41). I have yet to find another poet—or writer, for that matter—who approaches such discussions with empathetic diligence, taking day-to-day life and turning it into something divine.

By the end of the collection, readers are left feeling a deep connection with Garcia-Mendoza. There is a sense of relation with the poet, of knowing who she is and she the readers. In “Midlife,” one of the final poems, Garcia-Mendoza laments: 

Nature returns, night slowly creeping up, and the speaker’s thoughts are continually tinged with loneliness and self-detriment: “All this love & what’s my problem?” (Garcia-Mendoza 71). This poem feels representative of the collection as a whole, surrounded by love and loss and strife in a time of building one’s identity. Being able to join the poet in this journey is an honor.

Songs for the Land-Bound truly does sing, the voice demanding attention—and all readers will gladly provide. Garcia-Mendoza approaches challenging themes such as motherhood, religion, and illness with great consideration, her penmanship both provocative and hauntingly beautiful. She takes words and masterfully manipulates them, her poetry is rife with resonant lyricism—for example, “the carrion, the carry on, the carrying” (Garcia-Mendoza 41). While each poem is vastly different in both structure and phrase, they flow one after the other, the pages a river that one can’t help but swim in. Although Garcia-Mendoza claims that “time is tragedy” in her poem “Fossil Record” (20), I have no doubt that this collection will be celebrated for years to come.

Songs for the Land-Bound is available from June Road Press

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Mia Grace Davis (she/her) is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. Her work appears in Gone Lawn, The Tusculum Review, and Ice Lolly Review, among others. She is a 2023 National YoungArts Finalist in Writing and a U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts Semifinalist. Visit her at miagracedavis.com.