andrea bennett, the berry takes the shape of the bloom

 

 

When people said stay hungryI thought they
meant it literally, stayhungry because that was
the price of being thin. Whenthey said salad
days I thought itmeant the days when we were
young enough to be alwayshungry and only
eating salad. I can tellyou how many calories
are in an apple and howmany calories make
up a pound. I can tellyou how many pounds
my mother weighs and howold I was when
I surpassed her weight. Theonly time I was
thin the thinness camebecause I was sick and
couldn’t eat. When the sicknesslifted I felt relief
and sadness. When peoplesay unhealthy they
mean fat. When people sayunhealthy they do
not mean what unhealthyhas done to my brain.

Thelatest from British Columbia poet, writer and editor andrea bennett is the poetrytitle the berry takes the shape of the bloom (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks,2023), a book-length lyric suite comprised of untitled, accumulated fragmentsthat cohere into a loose kind of narrative arc. Following bennett’s full-lengthdebut Canoodlers (Gibsons BC: Nightwood Editions, 2014) [see my review of such here] and more recent essay collection, Like a Boy but Not a Boy (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), there is something about bennett’slyric, bennett’s line, that refuses to remain static. “I had a temper so hot itcould fry an egg.” they write, early on in the collection. “Like a / keybreaking off inside a rusted U-lock. Like an / unanchored bookshelf in anearthquake. Like a / crow picking a fight with an eagle.” Offering a blend of lyricbend and first-person memoir, these poems rush and run electric across acollection that originated, as the back cover offers, “as a gesture towardsoptimism after loss, pain, difficulty, and fear. It began as a linearnarrative, offering a window into one trans person’s life after they feltcontented and secure. But in the end these poems, which capture particularmoments in time, may recur in any given present: sometimes what surfaces is anxietyor anger, sometimes love or eagerness.”

I dreamed we abandonedour anxious life for a
different one in Phoenix.I imagined a campus
of new buildings, tryingto look old. We lived
together in a concretesingle: one bed, two desks,
and a hot plate. Whereis the library? The dream
was supposed ot mean wecould leave, but it also
meant we could neverstart over. I palmed the
concrete hallway and gotstuck in its pores.

“Iforget what poetics are.” bennett writes, towards the end of the collection. “Iforget the word for / the study of knowledge. I need a phrase when / the wordis a thing unto itself, a special ornate / thing in itself. I work in thekitchen, where I / make the food.” Deeply personal and exploratory, bennett composesa book-length meditative thread that examines a variety of shifts of being fromwithin, writing partners and ex-partners, pregnancy and mothering, all of whichare enormous enough shifts on their own, but all through the lens of becomingthe person they were meant to become: opening up as transgender, and the shift,as Mercedes Eng writes on one of the blurbs on the back cover, “from daughterto not-daughter,” and the difficulties of the author’s mother, a character unwillingto adapt, and perhaps, frustratingly, best left behind. There’s a lot going onwithin the bounds of this book-length poem, writing anger and acceptance,witness and loss, running the gamut from wild uncertainty and rage to acceptanceand clear confidence.

My mother haunts themargins of my life.
My mother said I always,I never, I always. My
mother got angry like thesky changes before
a summer storm. My motherbought clothing
four sizes too small fora daughter she didn’t
have. My mother said begrateful. My mother
said what you don’t know.My mother said I
was difficult. My mothersaid I was just like my
father. My mother sleptwith my best friend’s
father, my mother said I couldn’tstop working
at my best friend’sfather’s store, my mother
slapped me across theface. My aunt said please
stop writing about yourmother andthe next day
I read aloud, at afestival, all the worst poems I’d
ever written about mymother.