Please Bury Me in This

by Allison Benis White

The speaker in Please Bury Me in This grieves the death of her father and the loss of several women to suicide while contemplating her own death and the nature of language as a means of human connection that transcends our temporal lives. This book is also concerned with the intergenerational trauma of the children of Holocaust survivors.

Genres: Poetry, Death, Grief, School

69 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and reminiscent of Samuel Beckett...the felling of loss is 'muggy' and clings to you. There are poems in this book that made me stop reading further to reflect on what I should take away from them; something that does not happen very often. A powerful meditation on the here and now so many of us want to change.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful gems of desolation. Loss of life and meditations on the literature of loss, emptiness, and the power (or lack thereof) of words.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edit: here's my chat with Allison for Electric Literature: https://electricliterature.com/alliso...

—————
“In the postcard I keep of a field in winter, a child’s head is tilted back, her mouth open to snow. The awe is held still, says oh and oh and oh.”

(interview forthcoming, but in the meantime: holy fucking shit this book is a masterpiece and will be placed—whenever I'm done rereading and rereading and rereading it—on the shelf I reserve for my favorite books.)

[Aubrey Byron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sucked me in and dragged my imagination by the nose through its cluster of images. "I mean my head is a napkin folded into a swan." Its insight into depression and loss were both haunting and a comfort. The minimalist style made each word necessary and impactful. This is a book I could read a hundred more times only to find even more to underline and ponder.

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am drawing a window in the air around my face.//Something to speak through." This most elegant collection deals with death and survival, loss and violence. Allison Benis White's questioning voice draws you in with its carefully placed ambiguity, its reverence for the human presence - and absence. I already look forward to re-reading this book.

[Erica Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This unflinching meditation on depression and suicide conveys life's challenges while acknowledging its (often) unexpected beauty. A book-length poem of rare insight and tenderness.

Postcard review: http://ow.ly/OUFV30cJ85N

[Maria]

Asked by her husband on her deathbed how she felt, Elizabeth Baret Browning said, Beautiful.

I don't remember how many I took--a handful.

According to a Sufi poem, God has already drawn a circle in the sand around the exact spot you are overdosing in.

Then the world is perfect--leave it alone.

- from Asked by her husband on her deathbed...

I would say a mind made of snow.

I would say aspirin crushed in jelly for a headache, swallowed from a spoon.

Years later, a square of tinfoil and a lighter, the softest howl.

If you asked me what I wanted, I would imagine a ceramic skull, a jar with a moon.

I would say to shatter--to come true.

- from I would say a mind made of snow.

I am writing to you as an act of ending.

Cutting faces out of paper and folding them in envelopes like thoughts.

[...]

What makes the shape become visible, and breathe, is the angle and variation of absence.

[...]

I am you gone.

- from I am writing to you as an act of ending.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book demanded I read it in one sitting. I marvel at White's economy of language, how she pivots on such shattering lines, how the white space on the page haunts with the souls of the dead and the surviving. And in this sparse yet deeply impactful poetry, there's still research and literary allusions threaded throughout. The whole thing knocks the wind out of you.

[Mya Matteo · Rating 4 out of 5]

really haunting at times.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good grief— this book is gorgeous! Haunting and gorgeous.

[Edward Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read, and get her earlier stuff.

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reminded why I don't generally prefer reading other people's poetry. Although, this one has some interesting imagery. There are some quotes from the suicidal. I just don't understand it and only feel sad after reading it.

[jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

i want to tell you something memorable, something you could wear around your neck.

to use cheaper words,, this is the saddest thing i have ever read and for the even lower fruit,, categorically haunting

my tradition in bookstores is to stumble about fiction, make a round to the memoirs, and end in the poetry section where we make a selection off of gut

i chose this one off of this stanza alone

becaust God is difficult to describe.
Tell me again about the woman in Florida who lit herselfon fire.
What she wrote on the wall before she died -
I see the world with human eyes.

will be revisiting,, will be treasured on the shelf

[Rishi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I mean the death of death leaves a hole.”

[Jessamyn Duckwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I am not any closer to saying what I mean.”

This collection embodies the fragmentation and cyclical logic of grief and absence through its syntax and form—

“I mean the death of death is a hole.”

Parataxis, fragment, recursion, silence—these are the tools available to one attempting to look death in the face.

Really marvelous & I will return again and again.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please Bury Me in This consumed me as I began it on a bus and finished it as soon as I got home. In a workshop once, our professor noted that every word should cost $50 to be on the page. This applies to this collection--every line can be excerpted.

[Theremin Poisoning · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book of poetry I've read since Aracelis Girmay. Incredible.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. A tone like Bluets, in its sparse moments. The kind of book which makes you immediately buy all her other books.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this piece through, I am awash with this sense of mourning. Mourning for the loss of her father and her friends to suicide. Contemplating their deaths, but also her own. She paints a pretty bleak picture, that is yet still beautiful.

I was glad I read this collection as I was forced to slow myself down. Poetry can't be ingested the way I ingest other books. It requires (at least from me) a slow read. Rolling each word around your mouth so you can get a taste for it before you move on. Sometimes, we all need reminders to take a minute.

And though I didn't plan it, I also approached this book again around the anniversary of a friend's suicide. The collision of that anniversary and this reading also forced me to slow down and remember him. It is okay to take the time to fully feel and to allow yourself to fully feel. Every emotion doesn't need to be packed up and hidden away. Sometimes it is okay to unwrap it all and examine. She says "we must make meaning to survive." And to make anything mean anything, we can't ignore it all.

[Orca · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

“ I am drawing a window in the air around my face.
Something to speak through.”
(…)
“We took turns once, in my room, tracing letters on each other’s backs,
each letter overlapping, erasing the last one.
We will swallow each other, I thought, my hair in a wet braid.(…) She wrote on my back, I was invisible before this happened.”
(…)
“At the bottom of suffering, like a lake, there is a ring and I am reaching down.”
(…)
“According to a Sufi poem, God has already drawn a circle in the sand around the exact spot you are overdosing in.”
(…)
“After he died, I hung his blue paintings in my room to remember his mind.
Now I can see through the wall to the sky.”
(…)
“(…) and wanted not to die but to finish.”
(…)
“Tell me again about the woman in Florida who lit herself on fire.
What she wrote on the wall before she died -
I see the world through human eyes.”

[Maureen Alsop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the collection’s influence is the question of suicide. White dedicates the collection “for the four women I knew who took their lives within a year /and my father,” consecrating the poems as elegy. ...the iconic figures wandering the pages, suggest a helplessness and urgency when facing the trauma of inexplicable loss through suicide.

The poems exhale an enactment of death, and, for White, writing is a gauge for insight.

...White’s poems are a passageway for the unspeakable and unspoken. Read full review at: https://poemeleon.me/review-please-bu...

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second time reading through this collection. Each time I expect myself to get lost in the title-less, boundless sections where each line “cannot touch” and ideas seem fragmented. But just like the first time, the form only heightens the world of loss and void that the words create. Neat and clean without being austere, and only neat and clean in so much as it separates itself from the dark, messy center, looking into the grief that is the subject matter but never putting more than a toe in.

[Dayna Wimann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked maybe one or two of the poems, but I felt like a lot of it leaned really heavily on references to other poems or events. I appreciate it attempting to tackle mental health and issues like suicide and depression, but I really couldn't relate-even as someone who has dealt with depression. It felt like it was trying to be as dark as possible and didn't seem to present a realistic world view.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daringly spare and raw. I love the attention to the sentence, the depth of the images and meditations. I’m not always convinced with the searching for “God” in this, but I’m willing to be pulled by the scripture in the words. This book isn’t just for art’s sake, its drive is necessary to distill the contortions of grief, still the temptations to die.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, harrowing poetry collection about grief and death.

Benis White does an amazing job existing in the liminal, in the space between lines, in the observation, and the echo after the observation.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

White has a unique style. She uses metaphor in an organic way I haven't seen before. Symbols connected in unexpected or inexplicable ways, spoken as statements, more or less obviously referents to experience but kept vague.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stark poems that examine the suicidal urge. There are some really hard images here.

I love the form: poems without titles, each stanza exactly one sentence.

Recommended.

[elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

It isn’t often that I finish reading poetry and regret not reading it slower. This was most definitely an incredible collection, maybe one of my favorites!

[Kayla Hutchison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was haunting and sent chills down my spine frequently.