Tag: review

Sundress Reads: Review of My Arabic Breakfast

A cover of a book, showing the top half of a silver, circular, engraved platter with various Levantine foods such as mint tea, zaatar, and olives arranged in a circle. A plate of sunny-side-up eggs sit in the middle. The title, "My Arabic Breakfast," is written in Arabic and English letters against a bright yellow background. The author and illustrators' names, Yasmeen Fakhereddin and Noor Naqaweh is written beneath in white Arabic letters.

Written by Palestinian-Canadian educator, Yasmeen Fakhereddin, and illustrated by Syrian-Palestinian artist, Noor Naqaweh, My Arabic Breakfast (Zingo Ringo, 2024) is a bilingual board book that introduces young learners to Arabic. With vibrant illustrations of Levantine breakfast foods, and accompanied by English translations and pronunciation guides, this book helps children build their vocabulary, pattern recognition, and numeracy skills, all while spotlighting Palestinian culture.

Naqaweh’s hand-drawn illustrations make My Arabic Breakfast a visual feast for the eyes. From the first page, readers are welcomed to the dining table teeming with flavorful Levantine dishes. Each food item is drawn in mouthwatering detail—sesame seed-coated falafel, labneh cheese balls doused in olive oil, and mini filled flatbreads with steam wafting off them. The liveliness of the dining room and the warm, bright colors throughout the book remind readers of home, the feeling that they have a seat at the table. Another highlight of My Arabic Breakfast is phonetic Arabic spellings and English translations, which make bilingual learning easy. Many immigrant and interracial families hope that their children stay connected to their cultural heritage. Fakhereddin, as a Palestinian-Canadian and parent herself, understands this, and so aims to build children’s confidence in Arabic while introducing bits of Levantine culture in a way that remains accessible to children.

The first, full-page spread inside My Arabic Breakfast. It shows a yellow dining room, three brown dining chairs, and a dining table with a variety of Levantine and Palestinian foods. The left-hand side contains a jar of jam, a plate of cucumber and tomato slices, a bowl of olives, a basket of pita bread, twin bowls of zaatar and olive oil, bowls of fava bean foul, and a platter of falafels. In the center are a plate of mini filled pitas on an Al-Khalili pottery plate, a pan of six sunny-side-up eggs, salt and pepper shakers, an assorted platter of cheese, and a bowl of labneh cheese submerged in olive oil. On the right side of the table is a red tea kettle with steam coming out of the spout, a sugar bowl and plate of mint leaves, five glasses of mint tea, a plate with donut-shaped date-filled cookies, a plate of watermelon slices, and a tissue box with a tatreez embroidered cover. On the wall hangs a painting of a green olive branch laden with black olives. The bottom of the page says "welcome" in English on the left side and "ah-lan wa sah-lan" in Arabic on the right.

What makes My Arabic Breakfast unique is that it is entirely Palestinian-made, from the author and illustrator to the publisher, Zingo Ringo Books. Throughout the book, Fakhereddin and Naqaweh highlight their Palestinian roots through small artistic details. The opening spread, for instance, depicts a platter of watermelon slices on the table and a painting of an olive branch, two enduring symbols that represent the cultural identity of Palestinians and the connection to their land. The plate with the mini flatbreads on page 4, and the bowls of zaatar and olive oil on page 7 feature Palestinian pottery designs from the Al Khalil region, while page 8 showcases a traditional Palestinian date-filled cookie. On the last page, where all the food has been eaten, there remains on the table a tissue box with tatreez (embroidery), a traditional Palestinian craft. The book ends with one final, subtle detail—a painting with the word sahteen (“bon appetit”) in Levantine Arabic. Food, the practices and habits around food, hold personal and cultural significance. It is a means for communities to retain their cultural identity. My Arabic Breakfast is not only a language-learning book, but also a love letter to Palestine: culture and people. Through the recurring motifs of Palestinian foods and traditions, Fakhereddin and Naqaweh convey a message of resilience and pride in their heritage. In this way, My Arabic Breakfast is a message to the children of Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora, encouraging future generations to remember and celebrate their identity.

My Arabic Breakfast stands out because it is a board book primarily geared towards bilingual children from the Arabic-speaking diaspora. The significance of Fakhereddin and Naqaweh’s book lies in the mirror it holds up for children of Palestinian and Levantine origin, reflecting their heritage, cultural practices, and everyday experiences, and affirming their sense of identity and belonging. A persistent issue in mainstream English-language children’s books is the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of people of color, Arabs in particular. Even in recent years, the number of children’s stories written by or about Arabs remains very limited. For this reason, My Arabic Breakfast is a meaningful contribution to children’s literature. They can practice recognizing and naming foods from home and learn basic numbers and words in both Arabic and English. At the same time, the visuals render the learning experience all the more engaging.

A spread of two pages inside My Arabic Breakfast. The left page has a purple background with illustrations of three falafels in the center. The left-hand side has the number 3 at the top and the word "falafel" at the bottom in English. The right-hand side has the corresponding Arabic numerals and words. The right page has The right side is a reddish-pink background with four bowls of fava bean foul in the center. The left-hand side has the number 4 at the top and the word "foul" in English, with the corresponding numeral and word in Arabic on the right side.

My Arabic Breakfast is also a delightful read for non-Arabic speakers, helping them develop cultural awareness and appreciation for diverse communities. The book paints an authentic picture of Levantine culture and cuisine, allowing for an immersive educational experience. Children can discover a wide variety of dishes—zaatar, shai bil nana (mint tea), and fava bean foul, among others—and also learn Arabic words and numerals. As I leafed through the book, I found myself captivated by the vivid artwork and the elegance of Arabic script. With each page, my fingers traced the words, following the English pronunciation closely. Even as an adult reader, My Arabic Breakfast offered me an introduction to the richness of Palestinian and Levantine culture. Reading this book reminded me of the food and cultural practices in my own family as a Bangladeshi-American Muslim, of the joy of visiting friends and sharing traditional foods, and of the deep sense of togetherness. Moreover, reading My Arabic Breakfast made me reflect on the importance of diverse and inclusive books for children. Growing up in a small town in the American South, I was always curious about my heritage and mother tongue. At school, opportunities to explore this curiosity were rare. Thus, the presence of books like My Arabic Breakfast in libraries and bookstores is essential. They encourage children to learn about and cherish their identities. Addressed to young learners, My Arabic Breakfast is all about celebrating and maintaining one’s roots.

A South Asian woman smiling and sitting on a green couch. She has black hair, half lying over her right shoulder and half down her back, and is wearing a wine-red turtleneck. Behind her are two closed window curtains, one light blue and floral print, and the other solid teal.

Tara Rahman (she/her) is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MSc in Global Development from SOAS, University of London. She is also a recent graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course in Oxford, UK. With a strong interest in culture, identity, and global history, her personal writing often focuses on intersectionality and the untold stories and experiences of marginalized communities. In her free time, she enjoys reading literary and YA fiction, watching anime, and spending time with her tripod cat, Tuntuni.

Sundress Reads: Review of That Same Dream

I have never read a collection like Jennifer Overfield’s That Same Dream (Glacial Speed Press 2025). The poems, as beautiful and melancholic as they are, comprise only one aspect of a threefold project. They become deeper and more complex when experienced alongside the woodblock print of the cover, designed by Lucinda Cobley, and the musical accompaniment composed by Bruce Chao. To fully experience the poetry of Jennifer Overfield, a reading of the project, alongside the dynamic sound collage can be found on YouTube, released by DistroKid. However, the written elements of That Same Dream, despite their foundational role in the TSD Collective project, still hold their own quiet mystery.

Reading the text brought to mind many images, which is no doubt a result of Overfield’s own use of metaphor and imagery, alongside the overall evocative nature of her poetry. This montage of pictures compounds an overall sense of comfortable isolation, like a weekend spent hiding from the world with a lover. The collection lacks complex descriptors, as it relies on the reader’s associations with each illustrated fragment. The third poem in particular,: ‘A dream. / A piece of glass.   A dream that blew / my dress.’ allows proximity to the dream. A piece of glass and a dress blur together to create an amorphous and unique reading experience for the reader. One that could be interpreted as comfort, nostalgia, melancholia and beyond. As I read, I found myself reacquainted with an old sense of both loneliness and serenity.

In a way reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage, which combines and juxtaposes shots to produce narrative meaning, impressions, or associations of ideas for the viewer, Overfield’s poetry similarly juxtaposes images to generate meaning for the reader. Each image imprints something on the next, and as the collection circles back around to the beginning again, they all gain in depth. And I do mean this literally—That Same Dream is a wonder of traditional handset type methods, a limited edition: pure white Japanese Kozo and Pulp paper running in one slip and folded for each page. Each hand-bound copy offers a platform for Overfield’s poems, each one soft and almost skeletal—the lines resemble black ink ribs against the fine paper. It is a collection of marked contrast. Each image striking and indicative of the next, each letter a rebellion against the paper it resides upon, each moment of unfolding pages subverts the way we are taught to read.

With mentions of God throughout the collection, Overfield stirs a sensation of divine listlessness onto the page. ‘God is a grown man’, ‘the ocean was a word God kept / repeating’, ‘getting God to forgive me’; the ‘God’ of Overfield’s text is always capitalised, always male. Familiar, in the way that divinity seems to brush against our lives, whether or not it is invited. Yet this God is strange, an aspect of Overfield’s prose that stood out to me compared to the rest. This is not because he exerts influence over the narrator or holds visible authority over the poems, but because his divine presence seems to lack intention or intellect—because he seems lost.

The recording, a melodious, almost insidious experience of the poem, is available on YouTube. At a thirteen-minute runtime, the reading adds a far greater depth to the poems than a reader might understand on their first listen. Compiled audio of a dog barking, fire crackling, radio static and many other distorted sounds accompany the poetry readings. Monotonous and eerie, at times almost extraterrestrial, the reading bleeds through into the divine implications of the collection. Although every image is undoubtedly human and familiar, often simple in its description, they hide a myriad of disguised sensations. For instance, in the tenth poem:

…is either light coming through the open door

or you

  in the bathroom in an open shirt.

These scattered phrases share the intimacy of the narrator with ‘you’. They show the vulnerability of the addressee, with the images creating a montage evocative of ‘light coming through the open door’. A luminescent collation of hope, comfort, openness, and reassurance.

Amidst themes of growth, companionship, dreams and divinity, Overfield’s narrator takes up an introspective murmur, such a soft quiet that I felt I should make my breathing quiet, for fear of disturbing each tender thought as I read. The poet demonstrates a deep understanding of descriptive restraint and lexical precision. And with so few words, That Same Dream depicts so much.

To learn more about the TSD Collective and hear about the project in the words of the creators themselves, visit their website.

A woman looks left over a wide river on a bright afternoon.

Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work has appeared in The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.

Sundress Reads: Review of small earthly space

Sundress Reads logo, which shows a sheep reading, with glasses on and a book. Logo is black and white.
small earthly space book cover, which shows a red poppy blossom with a starry sky in the background

With an intriguing curlew bird guiding the reader on a journey of metaphysical thoughts and poppies dancing us from page to page, small earthly space (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025) by Marjorie Maddox is an enchanting collection of poems that mix the everyday with the spiritual and preternatural. Part nature writing and part musing on the human experience, this book will cause you to pause and reflect, both to appreciate the grandeur of the prose and to enjoy being struck by the meanings. Unique artworks by Karen Elias are perfectly paired with each poem, and I would personally love several of them displayed on my wall next to their inspirations.

Divided into five parts, small earthly space begins with an introduction to the messenger—the curlew—who has some saintly connections it forages for, when not burrowing deep for its own sustenance. “How far down would you go for wisdom?” (Maddox 23) we are asked, while the curlew takes us to the depths of the ocean before showing us the fine line that separates heaven from earth above. At times, the poetry has a mysterious vibe, and at other times, a more worldly one. The curlew sketches the spiritual for us, after which “another Babel [is] reconstructed in our own image” (Maddox 24) and we enter the human-focused world.

Part II brings us sharply to poetry about the everyday: about a mother sitting quietly, about a home, and about eating blueberry pie at a cemetery. We’re walked through a junkyard and deathbed before getting to rejoin nature with a gentle poem of clouds and dandelions. After the more transcendental topics of Part I, Part II feels like we’ve landed on the ground, and are walking around observing everyday life from within rather than soaring around it. Part III contains a few poems about an intense wildfire that happened in the town of Curlew, Washington. We meet our curlew bird again, this time as a witness to the destruction from the wildfire. Topics of devastation and danger feature in this section, along with some environmental poetry about endangered species, including humans. Our curlew witness calls out into the loneliness of the wildfire-ravaged ecosystem and gets no response. Maddox helps the reader experience the loneliness of the burned landscape before we’re whisked away to Part IV and a more stellar atmosphere.

A curlew bird is bending down, examining a bright red poppy it has just discovered. The ground is grey and seems desolate, as if it might be on the moon or an alien planet. In the background is a starry sky with a purple nebula and a crescent moon or planet.
Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy

My favorite poem from this collection opens Part IV: “Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy.” The curlew remembers the beauty of the poppies before the destruction and

  “un-buries instead the curved
  brilliance of joy, hallucinates
  a happiness addictive enough
  to be real.” (Maddox 76)

The reader feels wonder and awe again, at the beauty Earth offers us. We then sail through a set of poppy-themed poems, each lovely and paired with a custom artwork, as seen in the accompanying image here by Elias. As a fan of nature poetry, I love seeing this themed section. We read of a poppy’s connection with a cedar tree and glimpse the poppy’s personality (sometimes shy, sometimes bold), which introduces us to the last part of this book called “Bloom.”

Most of the pieces in this book fit on one page or two opposing pages, but two pieces are longer: “Made to Scale” and “Hues of the Hollyhock.” “Made to Scale” treats us to a more extensive writing about beginnings and endings and opportunities. In a forest of possibilities, everything depends on your own views and actions. Maddox repeats the following idea in multiple ways throughout the poem: “It is only a door if you enter or leave” (Maddox 47). After all, if you don’t use it, what may be a door might as well be a stone wall.

The second long poem of the book opens Part V, meditating on the many “Hues of the Hollyhock.” Unlike what you might expect, only one featured hue is a pink. We see a ghostbloom, blood flowers, and black hollyhocks, all written about with dark words and topics. An excerpt from “Hues of the Hollyhock”:

  “O ghost
    of Seasons Past, if these shadows

  remain unaltered by the Future …,
    will only black smoke and drab ash,
  ubiquitous soot and too-late regret
    populate our abandoned gardens?” (Maddox 90)

The poem ebbs and subsides with a light show in a kimono blossom brightening our senses before transitioning to a quiet amber calm, then, a final splash of rainbow color.

Most of the writing in this collection treats the prosaic with elegance. Maddox infuses her style into each poem, whether the theme is nature or more Gothic like death and destruction. The book touches the spiritual while keeping us grounded with bold visuals, traveling through both the unknown as well as the “imaginative and geographical locations we call home” (Maddox 17).

small earthly space has broad appeal, and I recommend it for most adult readers, for both casual or thought-provoking reading. This collection can be enjoyed both in public or private, but is best read somewhere where you have space for peaceful contemplation. Your own backyard or a public garden or park would be ideal. I would also like to recommend the following tea pairing Bird Nerd Birdwatching Tea. This tea combines the familiar into a unique blend that will both sooth and gently stimulate your senses, enriching your similar reading experience of small earthly space.

small earthly space is available from Shanti Arts Publishing

Ana Mourant sitting on grass reading a book. She has light skin and blonde hair, has a sunflower in her hair, and is wearing a green sundress.

Ana Mourant (she/her) is an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s editing program. She holds a Certificate in Editing as well as a Certificate in Storytelling and Content Strategy, and a BA in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. Ana conducts manuscript evaluations, edits, and proofreads, as well as provides authenticity and sensitivity readings for Indigenous Peoples content. Ana loves nature writing and Indigenous cultures, and, when she’s not working, is often out in the wilderness tracking animals, Nordic skiing, or just enjoying nature.

Sundress Reads: Review of I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby

Dev Murphy’s I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby (Ethel, 2024) is a compelling jigsaw of poetry, prose, and artwork that explores being human. Murphy wields craft like a well-sharpened pencil, delivering sentences and phrases that cut and linger. 

Much of this skill shows up in unique images and surprising use of simple words and phrases. Often, when writing–especially poetry–it feels as if every possible metaphor, simile, or rhyme has already been used. It is such a genuine pleasure to encounter the unexpected. For example, Murphy writes: “I envision myself walking around with a little egg balanced on my head. One wrong move, and it will roll” (22). There is nothing new or complicated about eggs, or balancing something on one’s head, but I had never before considered the simple, yet profound precariousness of balancing an egg on one’s head. When considering delicate situations, or moments of stress and uncertainty, we often turn to imagery that focuses on where we place our feet, not how we carry ourselves. But this image of an egg on the narrator’s head gives such a vivid impression of exactly how they have to move in order to avoid it falling, that we get an entire existence of casual tension, instead of just a singular careful walk. 

Multiple favorite poems of mine from this collection also demonstrate Murphy’s images as unexpected and simple, so striking. “The Hoard” offers a brilliant example:

“Lewis also wrote Do not love anything, not even an animal, and your heart will never be broken. // I would rather be a rock: irredeemable, casketed, and waiting on no one. But I am desirous all the time of you, all the time desirous to the point of waiting all day for you, while you are painting and mowing and making your dinner. My basil is wilting and my inbox is full, and when you come to me with seeds and soup and paper and invitations, I am a soundless edge—you are here!—and in your presence still I wait, wait, with nothing to show for myself but my love, with nothing to show for my love but my loving. Prop it up and then withdraw. // I do not know if you are in love with me, but if you are, you are in love with a dead squirrel. // Straight-faced and with tender paws I lay your gifts in a shoebox under my bed. There they calcify, they colden.” (Murphy, 14)

We are used to grand cliches like “I’ll love you until I die” or “You are my everything.” This piece instead says, “I would rather be a rock,” says, “I am desirous all the time of you,” says, “you are in love with a dead squirrel” (Murphy 14). There is something gritty, real, and relatable about comparing oneself to a dead squirrel. Love is messy. Real life is messy. Dead squirrels are messy.

The art of I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby is similarly simple and masterful. These are no ultra-realistic masterpieces, but they perfectly complement the overall feeling of disjointed chaos that is the life each of these pieces is narrating. Life is gritty and imperfect, with spilled coffee and mis-sent emails and days where putting the laundry in the basket instead of tossing it on the floor is inexplicably beyond our capability. The imperfect, expressionist art of this collection complements the writing to highlight this everyday messiness. 

One of the many underlying threads I noticed in reading I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby is the exploration of belief and religion. Murphy begins with a seemingly off-hand mention in  “Fortuneteller,” saying, “It is my family’s right to trust no one but God” (16). She continues in the next piece, “Lamb’s Ear,” with the more self-related, “Once as a child I heard the Lord say to me My frightened little lamb” (Murphy, 18) and a more in-depth look at the relationship between self, identity, and belief. The exploration though, maintains the same straightforward language of the collection that so captures my interest. 

There is no great philosophical discussion, just another person like you or me stating, “If we’re talking about life and death here, you should know that I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t now and then hear the voice of God” (Murphy, 18). What fascinates me so much about this, is the juxtaposition between the way the family of the narrator sees God, and the way the narrator sees God.

“Full of New God” pg 19

The implication in these two pieces (“Fortuneteller,” and “Lamb’s Ear”) is that they are both the same God, and yet also very different. This mirrors some of the dissonance I see in present-day Christianity between practitioners who have differing beliefs about queerness in the church. The dissonance of these pieces is made all the more stark by the image that follows. There is a certain bittersweet-ness to “Full of New God” that reminded me of nostalgia, of searching for belonging while still grieving what was left behind.

Hybrid collections, in general, carry a certain inherent experience of freshness–you never really know what you’re reading, they can be extremely difficult to label. Is it poetry or prose? Fiction or non-fiction? Neither? Something in-between? That is true of I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby as well, and something immensely enjoyable about the collection. As a reader, you get to approach the work with no expectations or preconceived notions. As a whole, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby is fresh, engaging, and easy to read again and again. Bravo, Dev, bravo. 

I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a baby is available from Ethel Press

Nic Job is a queer writer with their MFA from DePaul University and a constant curiosity for the world—cultures, places, people, and themself. They are a human who loves humans, and all of their tangled-up ordinariness. Their fiction, non-fiction, and poetry is published in Club Plum, Defunct Magazine, Spare Parts Literary, and other magazines.

Sundress Reads: Review of Transcendent Gardening

A memorial surrounded by bullets. Swirling white text displays the title "Transcendent Gardening." Displayed at the bottom in white letters: "By Ed Falco."

Ed Falco’s 2022 novel, Transcendent Gardening (C&R Press), is a brilliant work of prose set in Redvale, Georgia in 2016. Though the city and characters are fictional, themes from the story such as violence, loneliness, and the spread of information are incredibly prevalent in today’s reality. The book’s epigraph is by Matthew Zapruder’s poem, “Come On All You Ghosts.” Falco invites readers to see beyond the text through the poem’s final line, “I have to say something important,” which explains the creations of the monsters that follow. 

Violence infests the world of Transcendent Gardening. Falco obliterates the possibility of a story of love, joy, and human connection with the introduction of terror, frustration, and loneliness. This world eats up its characters and spits them into the mud and muck. In many ways, Falco creates monsters, leaving the reader to decide which of his creations is the scariest. The reader witnesses Angel Maso, who is aware he requires help, descend into madness. Through thought and action, Angel demonstrates the violence and chaos of the world, as well as the potentially life-altering consequences of ignoring warning signs. 

This is the story of a lonely man. One who becomes so disconnected from reality, so involved with the dismemberment of his life and psyche, that he becomes separated from all humanity. When Angel drifts far from the ground, his daughter can no longer see him in his eyes (Falco 208). Falco offers a fresh perspective on the intersections between mental health and violence and reminds his readers that tools of violence are superfluous solutions to many of the issues that arise from these intersections. In the end, the reader grieves Angel’s mental health alongside the victims of his actions. 

One continues to become immersed in Falco’s world, keenly aware of the palpable suspense he creates. Falco fosters a familiarity with his characters, an understanding of them as thinking beings, and, at the very apex of the reader’s love for these creations, he drops a bomb. The result: the reader’s world rocks in time with Falco’s plot. Escalation and suspense are as present in this Transcendent Gardening as the characters themselves. One trusts Falco to deliver on the promises he makes early in the book—words and thoughts foreshadow the kinds of violence that result in loss, but no one can prepare for the heart-wrenching catastrophe that is this book’s climax. 

Falco also offers a brilliant depiction of the modes by which history is recorded. Media reports, eyewitness testimonies, and fantastical speculations in Transcendent Gardening often obscure, and in some cases even erase, the truth. For example, the media labels Angel the “Angel of Death” (Falco 184). By glorifying the perpetrator rather than relaying facts and causes, those involved are swept into fantasy, creating stories and motives from thin air. Some even claim to have seen ISIS at the incident and to have heard yelling in Arabic, which the reader knows to be untrue (Falco 185). Such idolization of extreme acts of violence and assignment of terror to a group of unseen individuals leads to the ignorance of historical facts. These stories often excuse the need to look into structural issues that may require attention. In other words, Falco’s novel is a portrait of a leaky house. One may blame water for the destruction of the house and, once a villain is named, see no need to inspect how the water entered. Falco sparks a brilliant discussion on how to prevent future damage by patching cracks in the foundation. 

Transcendent Gardening isn’t all doomsday-level crime and terror. Falco is skilled in depicting deep human connection. His characters fall in love; they make impossible decisions; they become elated and embarrassed and empathize with one another. Angel uses gardening to ground himself to the Earth. Doll squashes her morals for her career. Claire forgives her father for heinous acts of violence. Falco handles potent feelings such as grief, hatred, fear, and loneliness with grace. He paints a best-case scenario in a world where violence is a given, and he gently offers a refreshing perspective on reoccurring problems. That said, this book is potentially triggering to many, especially those who have been affected by gun violence. Falco wants his readers to sit in these uncomfortable feelings. A call to action lurks beneath one of the novel’s concluding lines: “Nothing…was ever going to put an end to the violence in men’s hearts, but you could at least limit their access to the weapons that encouraged it” (Falco 207). If read with care and interest, the book offers hope that our world may contain more balance and empathy in the future.

Transcendent Gardening is available at CR Press.

Woman with Blonde hair in black turtleneck stands before blurred background of trees and sun.

Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

Sundress Reads: Review of All Hat, No Cattle

“I tell them I love them because I do. Because I can,” (18) says the narrator of Mariah Rigg’s All Hat, No Cattle (Bull City Press, 2023), about a bunch of green onions she has been keeping alive on the sill above her sink. The use of can sparks a question that runs through this collection: what can we love? In six short essays, this chapbook packs a powerful emotional punch, exploring the complexity of love–romantic, familial, one-sided, long distance. Each relationship is presented in an honest and undramatic way, as no relationship is perfect, not even the narrator’s relationship with her green onions. She must leave some behind to build a new life in a different city, yet the memories are preserved and presented with love. They are not tainted by time or emotion. 

Throughout all six essays, Rigg’s narrator navigates her relationship with C (who is addressed by his initial or in the second person). In “Suspended,” the narrator is in love with C, and C is either blissfully unaware or ignorant of this reality as he casually shares stories about an ex-girlfriend. The narrator tries not to imagine this ex being attacked by a goose as she acknowledges that she “only knew he loved her and not me” (Rigg 3). Their relationship is fraught with guessing on the part of the narrator. Though the essay starts with C’s hand on her knee, the narrator “never knew when or if I had the right to touch him” (Rigg 5). This guessing continues in later essays and the constant push-pull in this relationship makes it painfully relatable. 

Rigg weaves beautifully from external to internal landscapes throughout All Hat, No Cattle. The narrator wishes time would slow, and then, “The breeze stopped, the cottonwood seeds stuck in the air, suspended… The breeze resumed and the seeds fell to the water, rushing away” (5). Readers are given listed descriptions, images that stand out and define the moment for the narrator, such as, “The last petals of June’s roses drop through the window’s glass. I smell the honey of the baklava you bought from the store on the corner, the sharp Parmesan you shred over spinach-swirled eggs. Fleetwood Mac is playing” (Rigg 7). Each essay feels like a frozen moment, a snapshot of this love before it rushes away, first to different cities, then to separate lives.

In the second essay, “Gut-Punching,” the narrator’s relationship with C has become sexual. Rigg makes it clear, however, that their bond goes beyond sex, acting as a source of comfort and familiarity. Rigg writes, “You stand behind me. My head rests on your thighs, the water flowing from you to me, warmed twice over by the heater and your body. It’s dirty, but it can’t be worse than our own piss, which we lay in for months, curled inside our mothers” (6). There is deep intimacy in this moment and yet, distance still lingers. C’s feelings, and at times, the narrator’s, remain a mystery. After sex, the narrator, addressing C, explains, “your face whispering I love you even as your mouth says That was fun. I wish I could blame you, but neither of us has learned how to say what we feel” (Rigg 7). Such withholding is mirrored in Rigg’s writing, as the emotions are not laid out explicitly. The writing does not tell us how the characters feel. Instead, it lets us feel it.

Memories of the narrator’s father are braided through scenes with C in the essays “Linger” and “All Hat, No Cattle.” In the latter, Rigg writes, “Like me, here and in love with C, who’s so much like Dad. Like Dad, going to rehab for coke, then alcohol, only to get addicted to Bikram yoga” (14). There is an added layer of complexity to the familiarity that the narrator experiences with C. In “All Hat, No Cattle,” C drives around his new town, Lubbock, TX, drinking a beer and shouting out to a neighboring car. The narrator remembers drives with her father before he went to rehab. They would yell out the car window and startle pedestrians. Rigg avoids judgment on behalf of the narrator for the behaviors of these characters. They are presented, like the scenery, matter of factly.

The chapbook comes to a close as the relationship with C does. In the final essay, “Blessings,” the narrator is “rootless without C” (17) and therefore holding on to what she can: her green onions, a city that doesn’t suit her, her memories, etc. Here Rigg beautifully depicts our human need to attach to something. Though the onions have given their blessing, the narrator has not yet left Knoxville; she instead feels like she is drowning in the weight of the place. Though we readers aren’t directly told what has happened with C, the onions seem to say it all, “Be free, they tell me. Go forth, somewhere far” (Rigg 18). We can only assume C has done the same: set her free. 

So often the messaging around an ended relationship is to throw it out. Burn the photos. Move on. Paint the ex as a villain. The message of this collection is much more human, much more true. All Hat, No Cattle argues for honoring the relationship, the love, and the person. Rigg writes, “The green onions above my windowsill have become part of me through how they’ve nourished me. And though we will no longer be together, I will be grateful for that” (19). If the question of this collection is what can we love, the answer is whatever we please. Love cannot be taken from us when the relationship is. The nourishment stays. We can be grateful for that. 

All Hat, No Cattle is available at Bull City Press

Jen Gayda Gupta is a poet, educator, and wanderer. She earned her BA in English at the University of Connecticut and her MA in Teaching English from New York University. Jen lives, writes, and travels across the U.S. in a tiny camper with her husband and their dog. Her work has been published in Up the Staircase, Rattle, Jellyfish Review, Sky Island Journal, The Shore, and others. You can find her @jengaydagupta and jengaydagupta.com.

Sundress Reads: Review of Dire Moon Cartoons

Sundress Reads black-and-white logo with a sheep sitting on a stool next to the words "Sundress Reads." The sheep is wearing glasses and holding a cup filled with a hot drink in one hoof and holding an open book in the other.
A white mouse with wings and an extra set of eyes on its ears is holding a small red rocket and there are bullets over its shoulder. The background is seemingly the sky with clouds that is a foggy gray color. "Dire Moon Cartoons" is in the middle and "John Sullivan" is above that.

John Sullivan’s book, Dire Moon Cartoons (Weasel Press 2021), is an experimental collection of dramas mixes poetry and history lessons with drama to reflect the dangers of imbalances in power and insufficient empathy. Often through straightforward explanations of his work, Sullivan describes this new form as “Poetry, spoken word, and non-realistic/devised theatre are mutually-reinforcing, complementary forms, and the montage process jump-starts a cross-fertilization that often produces really interesting hybrids” (11). The dramatic format lends itself as pedagogical; poetic language captures the attention of mind and soul, ensuring the readers are attuned to Sullivan’s message.

In the first play, “Hey Fritz, Looks Like You Lost It All Again in the Ghosting,” Sullivan reimagines life after death. Memory is a constant figure in many minds; this idea that sticks around for the entirety of the book, personified by various characters’ struggles to achieve “amnesia,” as Sullivan puts it. Fritz Lang, a famous German filmmaker of the 20th century who fled Germany just before WWII and the play’s protagonist, begins with a lamentation. Death is not what he thought it would be: “What dreams may come, indeed,” he says, “Hamlet was right to worry” (Sullivan 16). Even in innocence, even in death, Lang is followed by the memories of this violent past. Lang’s inability to forget the atrocities committed in his home country, even when he had no hand in them, is the main motivator of his guilt-ridden afterlife. Sullivan subsequently reminds readers to hold themselves accountable for crimes against humanity, even as spectators, setting up the rest of the book as a sort of guide on how to (or how not to) lose oneself in empathy.

Sullivan often employs poetic language to set the scene. For example, Fritz Lang describes where he was when the war started, saying, “I was in Los Angeles, then, eating lotus, sucking skin, drinking in the sun, bobbing up and down in the surf like a postcard” (Sullivan 17). Fritz has some stored regret, perhaps survivor’s guilt, from the war. He got out. He’s practically on vacation. But how many millions of people did he leave behind? By using the Brechtian technique in his plays, Sullivan separates the audience from the action, reminding the reader that he intends for someone to learn from this language. Sullivan wants his readers to be aware they are spectating, making things personal.

Each section/scene of the book offers an artful look into the atrocities performed by those traditionally in power: Fritz gets new ears to “hear and do what he’s told to do” (32), actors are treated as props (32), and the “Mad Town Jump Rope Chant” offers another look at commonly used brainwashing techniques (33). Fritz Lang even offers a preparatory remark: “We should all have eyes all around our heads” (61), reminding the reader to pay attention to what’s going on around the world, not only to what they currently see.

As mentioned above, Sullivan discusses “amnesia” (67) as a way to avoid looking at reality head-on. He expertly captures the juxtaposition between what we are told by those in positions of power (i.e. propaganda) and what we can observe ourselves. For example, when the Mouse Van Gogh from the Big White Chair cannot get the “Helmut of Amnesia” over his “big dumb polyethylene ears” (Sullivan 73), he is forced to hear and remember all the violence that follows and all that came before. Over the course of the book, Sullivan also lays out the many ways people (and apparently mice) attempt to escape from reality. If it’s not amnesia, it’s substance abuse in the form of “the ultimate boss cannoli” (Sullivan 74) or objects of denial and power like Grey Sergeant’s “new-new eyes” and his “death wig” (Sullivan 123). When the Baby Rookie’s death is smeared on the white wall in The Baby’s Rookie Year, for example, denial transforms into a struggle to be remembered, even for heinous acts of violence.

Although Sullivan is critical of human actions, he is delicate in his treatment of said criticisms. His writing comes across as helpfully demonstrative and effectively engaging. Kookie word usage, fun sets and props, as well as wild, outlandish characters make for an informative, sometimes necessarily uncomfortable, but always entertaining set of dramas. Sullivan uses real human history to teach lessons on empathy, greed, power, and human nature; he tucks away the lessons in succinct humor and sarcasm interspersed with shocking acts of violence. And so, when Fritz Lang says, “I want a better history right here, right now…” (35), the reader feels it, too.

Dire Moon Cartoons is available through Weasel Press.

Blonde white woman smizes into camera.

Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

Sundress Reads: Review of The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful and A Playdough Symposium

Former Sundress Editorial Interns Jillian A. Fantin and Max Stone were messaging on Instagram and realized they both have micro-chapbooks being released by Ghost City Press in their 2023 Summer Series. They decided it would be fun to review each other’s micro-chapbooks. Though seemingly dissonant in content and form, Stone and Fantin’s micro-chapbooks support each other with their complementary takes on queerness.

Max Stone’s The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful

‘Oh my God, look.’ … [He] show[ed] them something in his hands…a handful of dust. ‘There’s glitter in it!’ he said. A man Fiona didn’t know peered over Yale’s shoulder. ‘That’s not glitter. Where?’ It just looked like dust.” —Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

In The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful, Max Stone worldbuilds their queer experience through the words of a speaker sculpting their human and planetary body. Through personal, intimate experiences with moment(s) of anti-queer political and social violence, Stone’s speaker fleshes themselves into a queer corpus containing the delicate anxiety and the search for kinship that is the human experience. As the collection continues, so does the speaker’s development into an active, wise, and nearly eternal observer of the beings and bodies within their orbit, akin to the experience of a planet’s moon.

Max Stone opens his chapbook concretely by establishing the speaker’s queer identity and physical presence(s) within their world. In “Coming Out Ad Infinitum,” the speaker’s words in the coming out cycle disrupt their oral communication before forming their body: “Throat all choked up, / too much bread, something” becomes “Tight corset chest. Heartbeat extra violent” (Stone 3). Stone’s recalling tense, painful moments is especially masterful because of the way the “you” directly speaks to the “I” of their same body. Coming out is repetition in a world where you “can’t be open… / Not yet” (Stone 3). Meeting “a new person” or “a new doctor” implies the queer speaker’s ceaseless sculpting of their physical body (Stone 3). The intensity of this repetition is driven home with a final disruption of any created rhythm: “Again and again and again… / You’ll come out and come out / And come out and—” (Stone 4). Stone continues building solid ground with an explication of a public tragedy in “Waking up to News of a Mass Shooting at Club Q on Trans Day of Remembrance” and “Beaux,” which features a figure both grounded in human reality and elevated to nearly-unattainable ideal of transmasculinity. In just three poems, Stone establishes a distinct speaker while also leaving room for further self-transformation.

By the time we reach the micro-chapbook’s end, the speaker completes their aforementioned transfiguration to a body that is both fully man and fully moon. Like our moon, the speaker remains bound to the tides of a planetary body’s unique orbit and thus may only observe, act, and experience within those orbital boundaries. To be a moon is to contain billions of years, to be cratered with time and knowledge.

Nevertheless, the titular poem, “The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful,” is the true moment of corporeal and cosmic transformation. In a final scene, the speaker and their queer friends move from the domestic party sphere into the memory of a woody naturescape:           

Everyone else was in the river,

I was on the bank, watching

the moon reflecting on the water,

watching their limbs stir

up the light. (Stone 10)  

The speaker leaves us to consider their queer duality and the implications of that existence. Stone’s speaker seems to reside on the fringes of their community, a lonely existence of distance and observation. Still, The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful is nuanced in a final depiction of its speaker who refuses to stay in shadows. “Watching” becomes an act of love, like the dependable orbit of “the moon reflecting on the water” (Stone 16). Further, Stone’s speaker isin the water within everyone else. Their human body may be on the bank, but their planetary body is clearly reflected in the water and, thus, illuminated by the same titular beautifying light. And unlike “everyone else,” Stone’s speaker can see the light that reveals everyone’s beauty! Ultimately, Max Stone’s The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful ends with a speaker’s self-made dual existence as fully human and fully moon, allowing them to balance experiences of queer oppression and systemic bigotry while still knowing and hoping for the beauty inherent within the true queer experience.

At the start of this review, I quoted a scene from The Great Believers, wherein a woman watches a video featuring Yale Tishman, a gay man who died decades earlier from AIDS-related complications, eagerly showing the camera and his onlookers the glitter in the dust. Max Stone sees the glitter in the dust. He knows beauty because he is beautiful. He sees beauty because everything this bisexual lighting touches is beautiful. And he writes the beauty of the queer experience while still delving into public and personal pain and oppression because he knows the true queer experience is inherently, definitionally, and fundamentally beautiful. Stone and his micro-chapbook do not ignore the existence of the dust. By identifying the dustier aspects of his worlds and treating his work with formal and thematic care, Stone makes the glitter that is queer beauty and queer experience sparkle even more.

I remain shocked at how consistently buoyed I felt upon starting and finishing The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful. Very rarely does feeling “beautiful” elicit positivity given imposed cisheteronormative connotations of appearance and identity. Stone, though, makes me and my poetry feel beautiful—that is, “masculine but in the peacock way” (8)—and I truly believe that every queer reader will shine a little brighter after basking in the light of Max Stone’s queer poetics.

The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful is available from Ghost City Press

Jillian A. Fantin (they/them) is a poet with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow, and the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of RENESME LITERARY. Jillian received an MFA in Poetry with a minor in Gender Studies from the University of Notre Dame. Their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl.

Jillian A. Fantin’s A Playdough Symposium

Jillian A. Fantin’s micro-chapbook Playdough Symposium (Ghost City Press, 2023) is a queer, contemporary re-imagining of Plato’s dialogues through a series of prose poems. The collection features two main characters that appear in each poem and engage in conversation, sissyfist (a play on words of Sisyphus) and two-piece suitor, who are based on Socrates and Phaedrus from Plato’s dialogues combined with Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O of the Jackass franchise. Sounds weird, right? Well, it is weird—in the best way. With two epigraphs, Fantin sets up a dichotomy between Ancient Greek philosophy and modern pop culture, the first being a quote from Plato’s dialogues and the second from Steve-O. The epigraphs set the stage and tone for the symposium, which is a delightful intermingling of so-called high and low culture as complicated philosophical concepts are superimposed on contemporary culture.

Each poem’s title is a concept from Greek philosophy, such as “Xenia,” the Ancient Greek concept of hospitality; “Eudaimonia,” the condition of human flourishing; and “Kleos,” which means eternal glory. Beneath the framework of these ancient philosophical concepts, sissyfist and two-piece suitor engage in strange, stimulating, and often crass dialogues.

Playdough Symposium is an apt title, as the world and characters are highly malleable and mercurial—nothing is stable. The reality of a liminal world both timeless and of the present day is constantly created, shaped, and re-shaped through the dialogue between two-piece suitor and sissyfist. For example, in this world, “AD means After Diane that is After Diane Keaton’s Bowler Hat,” (Fantin 5) which weirdly makes sense. Fantin’s work is deeply intelligent and sharply funny, packed with clever turns of phrase such as “so Medusa just made men rock hard?”, “hydraplaning,” and “Ice capades” (9). Nouns are used as verbs like “embryoing;” familiar phrases and cultural markers like brands are turned on their head, including when “sissyfist sucks two-piece suitor’s tootsies like he rolls his pop,” (Fantin 7). So much is packed into this short collection: misheard David Bowie lyrics, Jessica Rabbit, Zeus eating pita chips, and Buffalo Bill protesting no shirt no shoes no service.

sissyfist and two-piece suitor are hilarious and crude and their personalities leap of the page. A distinct undercurrent of sexual tension and homoeroticism courses through the poems: “a long soft kiss in the business district, two-piece suitor profiteroles back down the curve of sissyfist’s spine oh scoliosis groans two-piece suitor make me in your image” (Fantin 11). It’s unclear what sissyfist and two-piece suitor’s relationship is exactly, but it’s definitely queer-coded. sissyfist and two-piece suitor both use he/him pronouns yet neither seems to fit distinctly in the male category, which is exemplified when “two-piece suitor strokes the cervix in the hole in his thigh postpartum depression sissyfist nestles within that musculature,” (Fantin 8). That slightly unsettling image presents two-piece suitor as being both male and female or neither. sissyfist’s name alone is very queer, and his actions match as he “hissyfits” and “sissyshrieks.” Playdough Symposium also troubles and blurs the lines of gender. Above all, this work is deeply original. I can confidently say I have never read anything like it. Playdough Symposium is a delicacy of language, pop culture, philosophy, queerness, and mythology.  Each poem is layered with jewels of sound, word play, and genius turns of phrase. Each sentence is surprising—you’ll never guess one that begins with “ostrich egged,” will lead to two-piece suitor plaiting “pinkies into radishes,” (9). This collection may be playful, sexy, and funny, but there is also a poignant emotional depth. Fantin proves that Jackass can be philosophical and that the Ancient Greeks have a certain jackass-ness beneath the historical veneer of intelligence and sophistication. This is the micro-chapbook you never knew you wanted but definitely need to read. Right now!

A Playdough Symposium is available from Ghost City Press

Max Stone is a queer poet from Reno, Nevada. He holds an MFA in poetry and a BA in English
with a minor in Book Arts and Publication from the University of Nevada, Reno. He played
soccer at Queens College. Max is the author of two chapbooks: The Bisexual Lighting Makes
Everyone Beautiful (Ghost City Press) and Temporary Preparations (Bottlecap Press).

Sundress Reads: Review of The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful and A Playdough Symposium

Sundress Reads: Review of Cartography of Trauma

Book cover with white background and sillouette of a woman depicted with green lines like a topigraphical map. On the top, the title Cartography of Trauma appears. At the bottom is the author's name, Ashley Hajimirsadeghi.

It isn’t every day I’m offered the chance to discover a new favorite book, and I am pleased to say I have found exactly that in Ashley Hajimirsadeghi’s Cartography of Trauma. Published by Dancing Girl Press in 2021, the collection has a handsome cover featuring a feminine silhouette mapped out in green lines in the topographical style. What’s on the inside captured my attention even further.

Cartography of Trauma depicts the way all generations of people, specifically women, navigate traumatic situations. Through metaphor, Hajimirsadeghi reveals common coping mechanisms to find where those experiences fit into everyday. Conceptually, the chapbook can be organized into three categories: Stranger poems (the subject of the poem does not appear to be related to the speaker in any way), Family poems (what it looks like when families are purged from their homes, uprooted in violence), and Self poems (snapshots of each speaker at one moment in time). These separate storytelling methods combine flawlessly in Cartography of Trauma to reflect the reader’s own hurt disguised as the trauma of a stranger. 

One of the Stranger poems, “His mother was strange,” reveals a mother’s sorrow in one tight column. Grief permeates the air around this poem like Chanel No.5 wafting from the poem’s subject – “Mad Molly” – who has a moment of inspiration. Hajimirsadeghi writes, “She says a mother’s / grief rings with the clamor of the / rusting church bells in the square / but no one listens” (5). It’s almost as if the reader experiences this silence like a thick cloud of perfume, strong and invasive and completely invisible. 

The poem “Diorama,” focuses readers’ attention onto the ills born into a family hardened by the violence of men. Hajimirsadeghi explores an imagined life where the speaker takes the place of family members wronged, a past where “Grandmother is alive and healthy, three-dimensional” and “Grandfather, too, isn’t an old revolutionary haunt” (8). Probably the most haunting line of this poem is just after the speaker imagines taking Grandfather’s place, saying, “I am bleeding in 1978 Iran,” and “I am bleeding in 2020 America” (8). The speaker compares this trauma, this fear and resentment which springs from the violence of men’s decisions, to life in America with just two lines.

“Encoded” features an American tradition, the “how are you” greeting which many know to be rhetorical, and the speaker’s response, both internal and external. In the poem, the greeting (“how are you?”) and the answer (“I’m fine,”) are separated by the speaker’s real truth: “I think I’m splintering” (Hajimirsadeghi 13). Hajimirsadeghi continues, “if Sylvia were alive she’d laugh… I think I’m eroding, dying to throw myself into the incinerator, end this hunger–” (13). To the speaker, “I’m fine” includes all of these hurts and wants and givings up, but all that a stranger hears is that “I’m fine.” This is sometimes how we cope, by lying to the world and pretending we are okay; Hajimirsadeghi’s poem captures this innocent need to appear okay even when we’re burning inside.

“Self-portrait in youth” is presented “in Technicolor” that is colored after the fact. When the reader imagines scenes depicting youthful romance, it is through the goggles of Technicolor; the past looks brighter and more colorful. “Self-portrait as lady vengeance” is directly opposite “in black & white.” It is stark, honest, simply representative. There is no romance, no fantasy. The speaker is dark and smudged and real. The last line hits the reader like a freight: “stop filming me. I don’t want you to see me cry” (Hajimirsadeghi 26). There is a lost fantasy here which leads to a crippling vulnerability. Nothing hides in black and white, so we use Technicolor to escape, to cope with reality.

The final Self poem, “Self-portrait as erasure,” is possibly the most brutally powerful of them all. The speaker describes “[bleeding] blue out on the patio, barefoot & dancing in the rainstorm” (27), a scene conflicted. A generally joyful activity such as dancing is depicted simultaneously with precious and dangerous loss, and this is the truth of Cartography of Trauma. This poem is the anthem of the world, especially the world of women, a world in which women dance in the storms we did not create and bleed black and blue for a sliver of joy in life’s great tempest. 

Cartography of Trauma uses accessible language and creative formatting to tell the story of women by a woman for women. And what an anthem it is. The last line of “Self-portrait as erasure” (and the entire book) sticks with me even in my sleep: “Ma, you wouldn’t // believe me if I set this place on fire tonight… just wait–” (27). The reader is left to wait in violent anticipation for the flames of this book to catch the world. 

Cartography of Trauma is avalible through Dancing Girl Press.

A white woman in a black turtleneck stares into the camera. The background is a blurred scene of trees and sun.

Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

Sundress Reads: Review of Four in Hand

Sundress Reads black-and-white logo with a sheep sitting on a stool next to the words "Sundress Reads." The sheep is wearing glasses and holding a cup filled with a hot drink in one hoof and holding an open book in the other.
A book cover that reads "Four in Hand" in white letters against a dark green background with a folded down piece of yellow in the top right-hand corner. "Poems" is written in yellow in a vertical line below the title and the author's name "Alicia Mountain" is written in black letters at the very bottom of the page against a white outline that wraps around the dark green and yellow.

Alicia Mountain’s new poetry collection Four in Hand (BOA Editions, 2023) is comprised of four heroic crown sonnets—a sequence of fifteen interlinking sonnets wherein the last line of the first sonnet is the first line of the next, and so on, and the fifteenth sonnet consists of the first lines of the previous fourteen. Quite a complicated structure indeed, and tricky to pull off, but Mountain does so masterfully. She weaves together eloquent, and at times archaic, language with urgent issues like late-stage capitalism, the pandemic, environmental devastation, LGBTQ issues and discrimination, drone strikes, the 2016 election, etc. with contemporary references and found text. Mountain also offers contemplations of familial structures, her gay poetic lineage, love and loss, as well as investigations of the self and place.  Aside from the political undercurrents and heavier themes, Four in Hand is also tender and personal suffused with numerous kinds of love, including the lingering love that persists even after heartbreak, “I offer to trade you / a poem for the story of the place we pressed / our bodies together.” This book feels like a necessary antidote to the crushing pressures and anxieties facing us today.

A narrative thread is braided through the book, submerging then reemerging signaled by motifs like “train tracks,” “the queen,” and “violet,” “which operate as anchors that ground the poems and refocus the reader’s attention. The form lends itself to this loose, nonlinear narrative and though each heroic crown appears disparate at first you begin to notice the intricate patterns as you read further.

Each sonnet rolls effortlessly into the next, turning the meaning of its last line to mean something completely different—even opposite—when it becomes the first line of the next sonnet. For example, the last line of the ninth sonnet in the first sequence “Train Town Howl” reads “whomever you love. They belong beside you,” which seems to be a lament that their ex-lover likely has a new lover. But in the next sonnet, the same line reads as well-wishing towards the lover rather than lamentation—the speaker is now expressing to their past lover that they deserve to be with someone they love, whomever it may be, and be happy. Mountain achieves this reversal of meaning simply by changing the sentence structure. As a last line “whomever you love” is part of the sentence that begins in the previous line, but as the first line of the tenth stanza, “Whomever you love” is the beginning of the sentence, starting a thought rather than completing one. It’s a tiny change but has a significant impact, which is a testament to the virtuosity of Mountain’s. The syntax is delicately crafted and each period, comma, line break, and word, and is intentional.

On the note of intentionality, while many sonnets in the collection resemble traditional sonnets, the sonnet form never feels tired because of Mountain’s experimentation. In the second sequence “Sparingly,” she pushes the boundaries of the form: each line consists only of a single word. A traditional sonnet puts pressure on the line as a unit, by using one word per line Mountain zeroes in on the word, forcing us to linger with each word and really notice them, hold on to each syllable, savor the sounds.

Despite the dark cloud of political instability, environmental degradation, and loss that permeates, Mountain finds moments of lightness and hope, especially in the “elementary poets” the speaker is teaching poetry. They like “butts and cats and killing” and the girls are “purple princes too.” This childhood silliness and wonder contrasts the “The sinister lever-pull that will not right us / came swift in November,” meaning the election of Donald Trump and the dividedness of the nation. Mountain asks, “How long has it / been since you worked for an hourly wage?” exemplifying the disconnect between the wealthy and the politicians and the rest of us. By posing this question and then going to work with eight-year-old poets, the speaker is deciding to do not be crushed by despair and do the important work of investing hope in the future, represented by the children, and in small but not inconsequential actions. Such a kernel of optimism is found when “Eight-year-old writes, We befriend enemy / countries like we were never enemies.” A vision of a more peaceful world without senseless violence—a better world.

Four in Hand is an epic, ambitious work, the opulent landscapes, gentle intimacy, and acute awareness of corruption and destruction that we are complicit in, “Often, I forget I am a benefactor / of war by birthright,” will percolate in your brain long after you’ve put the book down. It is a perfect alchemy of the personal and the political, of abundance and sparsity, of the quotidian and the extraordinary. Mountain demonstrates dexterity in both form, lyric, and blank verse while retaining a pleasurable cohesiveness. This book is achingly beautiful and exemplifies the magic of poetry—how at its best, poetry can touch you deeply; make you feel, and think, and cry, and hope, and yearn, and be glad to be alive.

Four in Hand is available from BOA Editions

Max Stone is in his final semester as an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his BA in English with a minor in Book Arts and Publication from UNR in 2019. He is originally from Reno, but has lived in many other places since including, most recently, New York City. His poetry has been published in Black Moon Magazine, & Change, Fifth Wheel Press, Sandpiper Review, Night Coffee Lit, Caustic Frolic, and elsewhere. Max is also book artist and retired college soccer player.