In a Body

by Emily Hockaday

The poems in In a Body will take you to Fire Island dunes, Jamaica Bay marshes, inside a glacial moraine, and beneath the forest to the mycorrhizal network. Emily Hockaday's speaker is as likely to be pouring alcohol down a drain as inspecting horseshoe crab eggs with her child. With her, we learn to be still and to look at the micro. We walk the line between “tame/and not tame.” Through a feminist and ecopoetic lens, Hockaday considers the ecosystem of the ill body contrasted with the ecosystems around us. In addition to themes of ecology and chronic pain, this collection touches on parenting, grief, sobriety, and the urban environment. How do chronic fatigue and pain isolate a person? Can nature provide connection in the face of this isolation? These are questions In a Body strives to answer. This collection looks to plant, fungal, animal, and geological bodies as a way of trying to understand humanity’s place in the Universe while also grappling with chronic illness.

Genres: Poetry

85 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2023

Reviews

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poetry about the body, illness, survival, and love.

from Body After Dry Drowning: "I see the temptation / Ophelia had. It was never about / just one other person. She wanted to drown / somewhere outside of herself."

from The New Year: "The specter / of the last few years follows me / but loses opacity. I understand what it means / to be out from under."

from At Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge: "The snow geese descend, / leaning back, seemingly, against the pond, / as they land, wings out— / for drag? For balance? / I never think about flying / the way creatures with wing fly. / The mechanics, I mean."

[David Cazden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a book of compact, well crafted poems that often deal with a body in pain. Yet many poems are more open ended and can't be reduced, ironically, to "the body" though that appears in many titles. Though I enjoyed reading all 67 (think I counted right), I think I like the subjects of childhood, motherhood, hiding away, the hidden self, and other poems which are somewhat mysterious. All are good and superior craft and economy of language is everywhere. Recommended reading.