Samuel Ace, I want to start by saying

 

I want to start by sayingI hear the filter in the turtle tank like a fountain.

 

I want to start by sayinglike a fountain in the middle of a field of wildflowers.

 

I want to start by sayingthat today would have been my father’s 84th birthday,
            that he died eighteen days before his 79th.

 

I want to start by sayingthat he was young and that death took him by surprise.

 

I want to start by sayingthat my mother died nine months ago, less than four
            and a half years after my father.

 

I want to start by sayingthe beginning of this sentence.

 

I want to start by sayingthat a child could have been born in that time.

 

I want to start by sayingthat a whole year has gone by since my godchild’s birth.

Andso begins the accumulative book-length poem by American poet Samuel Ace, thedeeply intimate I want to start by saying (Cleveland ON: Cleveland StateUniversity Poetry Center, 2024), a work composed from a central, repeatingprompt. The structure is reminiscent of the echoes the late Noah Eli Gordonproffered, composing book-length suites of lyrics, each poem of which sharedthe same title—specifically Is That the Sound of a Piano Coming from Several Houses Down? (New York NY: Solid Objects, 2018) [see my review of such here] and The Source (New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2011) [see my review of such here]—or, perhaps a better example, the late Saskatchewan poet John Newlove’s poem “Ride Off Any Horizon,” a poem that returned to that samecentral, repeated mantra (one he originally composed with the idea of removing,aiming to utilize as prompt-only, but then couldn’t remove once the poem was fleshedout). “I want to start by saying,” Ace writes, line after line after line,allowing that anchor to hold whatever swirling directions or digressions the textmight offer, working through the effects that history, prejudice and grief hason the body and the heart. I want to start by saying articulates past racialviolence in Cleveland, subdivisions, loss, “trans and queer geographics offamily and home,” chronic illness, love and parenting, stretched across onehundred and fifty pages and into the hundreds of accumulated direct statements.Amid a particular poignant cluster, he writes: “I want to start by saying that Iaccepted the conditions of my father’s love.” There is something of thecatch-all to Ace’s subject matter, the perpetually-begun allowing the narrativesto move in near-infinite directions. As it is, the poem loops, layers andreturns, offering narratives that are complicated, as is often the way offamily, writing of love and of fear and of a grief that never truly goes away. Further,on his father: “I want to start by saying I was frightened to upset the balanceof our connection.”

            I want to start by saying that I’vebeen out of the house twice today.

 

            I want to start by saying that now Iam sitting with a friend over coffee.
                        She mourns the loss offriends because she’s in love with someone who is trans.

 

            I want to start by saying thefamiliarity of so many stories.

 

            I want to start by saying that I mournthe rise of rivers, the smell of creosote,
                        the relief of summer monsoons.

Andyet, through Ace’s perpetual sequence of beginnings, one might even comparethis book-length poem to the late Alberta poet Robert Kroetsch’s conversationsof the delay, delay, delay: his tantric approach to the long poem, always backto that central point; simultaneously moving perpetually outward and back tothe beginning. “I want to start by saying the deep orange skies of the monsoon.”he writes, mid-way through the collection. “I want to start by saying we havereturned to Tucson.” Set into an ongoingness, the lines and poems of Samuel Ace’sI want to start by saying is structured into clusters, allowing thebook-length suite a rhythm that doesn’t overwhelm, but unfolds, one self-containedcluster at a time. His lines and layerings are deeply intimate, setting down adeeply felt moment of grace and contemplation. The book moves through thestrands and layers of daily journal, writing of daily activity and thoughts aswell as where he emerged; how those moments helped define his choices through theability to reject small-mindeded prejudices. Through the threads of I wantto start by saying, Samuel Ace may be articulating where he emerged, butall that he is not; all he has gained, has garnered, and all he has leftbehind. As he writes, early on:

I want to start by sayingperfect in what world.

I want to start by sayingdesire.