Secure Your Own Mask

by Shaindel Beers

These poems balance between the harrowing and the beautiful, hovering at the precipice where women are both horseback riding heroines and battered mothers striving to protect their homes, their children, their identities. These poems are knives thrown with precision, fairytales rendered real through the grit and dirt of the natural world surrounding their imperfect speakers. Social media helps us grieve our losses (“suicide, suicide, suicide”) and white rabbits lead us down the winding roads of our past mistakes (“Until / a man just became an escape hatch to another man, / and all the worlds were eventually the same”). Transformations abound in this collection, though not by any conventional fairytale means, as Shaindel Beers with her knife-sharp wit and even sharper intuition unveils the nuance within the nuance of any situation. These poems don’t just seek escape―they create their own worlds within the escape hatches and (re)build from there.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 2018

About the author

Shaindel Beers is author of the poetry collections A Brief History of Time (Salt Publishing, 2009), The Children’s War and Other Poems (Salt, 2013), and Secure Your Own Mask (White Pine Press, 2018). Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in eastern Oregon’s high desert, and serves as poetry editor of Contrary. Learn more at http://shaindelbeers.com .

Reviews

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Someone is always// a planet, and someone, a star. Some lives are too big/ for one lifetime." A deeply moving third collection from Shaindel Beers, "Secure Your Own Mask" is life-affirming and simultaneously disturbing in a good way - one that digs into our essential humanity.

[Jennifer S. Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

So Beers has converted me. I've been dabbling in poetry of late, but I'd never read a collection from front to back. I did with Secure Your Own Mask, and it was a beautiful experience. I read a few poems every day, letting them linger in my mind. Some are chilling (dealing with domestic abuse) and yet still lovely. Some are simply gorgeous. An alluring collection that makes me wonder what other wonderful poetry I've been missing!!

[Kelly Sundberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been avoiding writing a review because I wanted to do it properly and couldn't think of the right words, but I finally decided to just keep it concise. This book is stunning and heartbreaking and beautiful. I am better for having read it.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using the overriding metaphor of birds (both in flight and caged), including the title poem taken from the stewardess warning to “Secure your mask before helping others,” Shaindel Beers “digs deep” into the female psyche in this selection of poems that not only explores gender inequality but reveals the struggles Woman encounters in relationships, whether She be a character be in ancient Greece or a persona in the Western World today.

And Beers’ clean, clear language and smooth cadences propel the reader through this book as quickly as flight. Taking off with “The (Im)Precision of Language” with its images, “the ring-necked dove” and “wringing a dove’s neck,” “the panic of birdsong,” “feigning a broken wing,” “its broken wing,” “the cage,” the collection springs to “Secure Your Mask before Helping Others,” glides on to “The Mechatronic Bird Falls in Love with the Real and Vice Versa,” and then, spirals to other bird/flight images occurring in “The Bird Wife,” “Philomela as Farm Wife,” (from the Greek myth ending with Philomela morphing into a nightingale), “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pelican,” “First Flight” and lands in the closing poem, “After Mary Oliver,” where the persona refers to herself as a “Feeder of finches.”

Along with employing the bird/flight metaphor to address gender issues, she weaves in the image of a bee gathering pollen in “Is It Human,” a poem alluding to the Nazis and the Holocaust, images lying under the surface of the “Hate” Zeitgeist of the past few years. There, the persona considers the “philosophy of passing” and addresses the neo-Nazi’s question reverberating from the Nazis of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s:

Is it human? I thought of the Jewish impulse to answer
a question with a question. The way my friends and I
used to joke, Whaddya mean, ‘what do I mean’?

Today, I had trouble being human. I spent an hour
studying the same bee gathering pollen from the same
dandelion. I watched her fill her pollen sacs, watched

her wipe each antenna clean in her gleaning (57-58).

Not only does Beers add a contemporary voice to other feminist writers sprouting “wings,” such as predecessors Erica Jong (FEAR OF FLYING) and Maya Angelou (I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS), her personae exhibit a tenancy that enables them to overcome wrecked lives and indeed, thrive. And despite its title, “A Catalogue of Pain,” displays overcoming the pain of being an insightful female, with these powerful words about such a state:

Sometimes it is a sand dollar under the skin
and I am certain if I had the courage to slice
my flesh, release its roundness, break its
brittleness between my thumbs and forefingers,
those five white doves would fly away and release
me—the spirit of Jesus Christ who haunts me
for being a woman, less pure, than his mother
Mary. Women’s pains always treated
as penance. Childbirth pains—punishment
for Eve’s sin, for carnality. A closed throat—
for speaking against God or husband, the intended
God of the household. But I know it
is the Third Eye. My Tenth Gate to the other realm
where I know more than any man . . . (45-46)

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me with the term "poetic savagery", and I have to admit that it definitely fits. Beers pulls no punches, and her words are both unapologetic and clear cut. Poetry should make you feel, should make you think and stretch, and this collection does that.

On a personal note, the birds throughout the entire collection spoke to me, and I am very glad this was recommended to me. Highly recommend to lovers of personal, nature, and emotional poetry -this isn't one to miss.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shaindel Beers has a gift for bringing life to life. She reveals the beauty in what is ugly and masterfully refines the rawness of life, love, and nature. She combines the trappings of life, the traps of love, and the freedom of nature forcing us to examine our own experiences with all three: “Most days, I know that I’m wreckage, debris.” How have we all not pondered this? How have we not all recognized the “precarious balance between trust and chance” that makes up the bulk our lives?

[Ray Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lordy. Beers takes the reader into the heart of horrible abuse and the sometimes brutal beauty of the human and natural worlds in which such violence exists. I had to read these poems a few at a time and with space in between because they provoked anxiety. Yet, the way she puts words together is so damn gorgeous that I couldn’t imagine not finishing.

[Aaron Dietz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. So many of these pieces floored me. Uniquely real and direct.

So good.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been looking forward to reading Shaindel Beers newest book, "Secure Your Own Mask." I read "A Brief History of Time" after it came out in 2009 so pulled it out again and reread it along with her new book! What a wealth of female wisdom. A farm girl, she grew up loving animals, feeling life deeply, she is an empath who resonates with fairy tales, and knows from experience a woman's situation. She has compassion even after an abusive marriage; she is a fire ball who engages on social media with thugs (this is a mild way to label them) who attack online.

The opening poem in the book, "The (Im)Precision of Language," points out how language hides danger, in the opening stanza: "How far the ring-necked dove is/from wringing a dove's neck. The way/a stand of trees can hide a deer//stand, concealing the hunter who/will shoot the deer."; and the danger to women from men using examples of the word brace with its many meanings, "a pair, a brace/of kinsman, of harlots, of greyhounds,//a brace of warlike brothers. In another time/I stood in front of the classroom in a chest/brace because my husband had collapsed//the cartilage between my ribs."; more examples of the husband: "he was grooming me for greater violence,/the rock thrown at me in the car,/the wedding ring pressed so tight/by his hand holding mine until I bled." Then she finishes the poem back with the doves: "the difference between ringing/and wringing and where language leaves us/when someone controls every word we say,/when we have no one left to talk to."

I love how her poems spiral out and back to make a point, to give full emotional impact. She is writing the issues of our times and she does it well. In the poem, "Reality falls away—" she writes:
"The monster is merely a victim/who didn't know change was coming,/didn't want the bloodlust, was just//an actor being human, which is/always a process of loving humanity,/devolving into something else//altogether with each cell's division,/each full moon's gravity pulling/blood though the capillaries."

The third section of her four-section book is the poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pelican," each poem could stand alone, and some have been published independently. I'm sharing poem 8:

We must remind ourselves
the pelican is an opportunist.
Do not be surprised when
it snatches a duckling,
flings it up so it
drops in headfirst,
takes water into its bill,
so the duckling
will drown
in its gullet.
We have trouble accepting
when nature goes against
what we see as order.
Cannibalism, for instance,
or an insect eating
a mouse. We act horrified
because we like to forget
that we are exactly
the same.

The penultimate poem in the book, in Section IV, is a six-part poem titled "This Old House" where she goes through each room and recounts her history and abuse in the rooms, in section II. the bedroom, "What I'm trying to say is that there were/ten years/I wasn't in my own body/Things happened/in this house that/I don't know how/to write." At the end in section VI. she comes to, "but this is my house, and I want to fix it.//Besides, if I leave, how will my little birds find me?"

Read this book to find the birds and the joy buried in the wisdom. She is a bright light shining in darkness, for all women, even if we've not experienced intimate partner violence. We need to support each other, we need to support our planet, our birds, our lives. This author is a wise mother, teacher, and writer. I look forward to her next book to see where it takes us. Also, a heads up to her poem to Mary Oliver filled with finches, starlings and sparrows.

[McKenzie Tozan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In December, I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to poet Shaindel Beers about her latest poetry collection, Secure Your Own Mask (White Pine Press, 2018). We discussed in-depth how personal her poems are, the role of the political and violence in her work, and even (after discovering we’re from geographically-similar places) the Midwest. (Our interview will appear in The Rumpus this February; I’ll be sure to come back with a link when it’s live!)

In the meantime, I wanted to share my thoughts on Secure Your Own Mask, because it was easily one of my favorite reads of 2018.

For me, poetry that values nature, that in some way echoes Plath, that deals in some of our harsher subjects, like abusive relationships, already interests me. But poetry that delves into the confusion and misgivings of reality and false memory, dreams and escapism?—well, let’s just say I’m all in.

Shaindel Beers’ poems are gorgeous, highly memorable, and shocking in places. Where it might be suggested that there are enough nature-focused poems to go around, Beers challenges this through her inclusion and admiration of nature. Several poems in particular stand out with their inclusion of animals, both realistically and metaphorically: “The Mechatronic Bird,” “The Secret Rabbit,” and “After Mary Oliver,” to name a few (though there are more, and just as lovely). In these poems specifically, there is the presence of, both, the metaphysical or metaphorical animal, and the realistic one. For example, in “The Secret Rabbit,” there is the analogy of running over a rabbit in the car and what that act might suggest for the overall story, only for the persona of the poem to later confess that they had run over a rabbit in real life, and what the implications were. In both renditions of the rabbit—the one from the story (metaphor) and the one from the larger body of the poem (reality)—we witness a physical, living and breathing, rabbit, but its role shifts in what it portrays, and this shift is a recurring movement for several animals across the collection. This serves as a reminder of the importance of nature in our writing, not only for nature itself but for its implications, and what it can thematically teach us about other areas of our lives.

Not to mention the role many current events and concerns take as a backdrop to some of Beers’ poems. Highly prevalent to this collection is the role of domestic violence, and the “surprise” of where violence is witnessed: often behind closed doors with someone we trusted, as opposed to out in nature among wild animals where the possibilities may seem more open. From the first poem forward, we follow interactions with an abusive partner, often partnered with nature imagery, politics, and escapist poems. My favorite pairing, however, are poems that incorporate memories of Beers’ son growing up, and how he represents an evolving male figure. These poems become some of the most beautiful and touching of the collection for me, surely because I am a mom, too, but also for the hope they instill in what we can teach our children, and how our world could be better.

Finally, there is the role of the real in the collection—well, the real, dreams, memory, and escapism. One of my favorite poems appears at the beginning of the collection, describing an acrobat act at the circus. Beers shared in our interview together that she used to dream of running away to the circus, and I believe it: the surreal and whimsical quality of the images in this poem alone, let alone others that reference the circus, bring to the collection an authenticity of longing for something better that is certainly implied elsewhere, but becomes more real in these specific poems.

I cannot recommend this collection enough. It’s lovely, raw in places, imagistic and surreal—many of my favorite qualities of contemporary poetry. I hope that you will give it a read, and take your time with it, and enjoy.

A note on how I read this book: I know every person approaches, digests, and appreciates poetry in their own way and by their own right, but I implore you: give yourself a chance to revel in the poems that are of an average-length in the book (1-3 pages), and give yourself time to slowly creep through and sit inside the long ones. Don’t rush yourself. And even more importantly, think about what the persona of the poem feels and why, and think about how reading the poem in that light makes you feel. These poems are significant beyond their lovely writing, because they place in front of us subjects that are prevalent to us right now (such as the #metoo movement) and encourage us to consider our understanding and stance on such subjects.

Finally, before I go, here is one last favorite poem from the collection: Shaindel’s favorite, and also one of mine. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy:

The (Im)Precision of Language

How far the ring-necked dove is
from wringing a dove’s neck. The way
a stand of trees can hide a deer

stand, concealing the hunter who
will shoot the deer. The deer, who will
fall in the fall in the fallow field.

Once, someone who was dear to me
threatened me with a deer rifle. Cleaned
it random times, out of season when

he was upset. Said, I don’t want to be
divorced. We can make this work, while
working the polishing cloth along the metal

barrel of the gun. My blood barreled through
my body when I would see his truck in the drive.
I was never not scared to come home, to fall

asleep, to say the least little thing wrong.
Language became a tricky game where saying
nothing meant everything, where saying everything

meant nothing left to fear. I sang my sorrow song
to anyone who would listen, recognized the panic
of birdsong, the desperation of the killdeer

feigning its broken wing. Anything to lure the predator
from its nest. Its broken wing was strength
of a different kind. I figured showing my weakness

might help me. Someone might understand the bird
of my heart always crashing against the cage
of my ribs, the moth of hidden fear fluttering

to escape from my throat. Once, in my Shakespeare
class I learned that brace meant a pair, a brace
of kinsmen, of harlots, of greyhounds,

a brace of warlike brothers. In another time
I stood at the front of the classroom in a chest
brace because my husband had collapsed

the cartilage between my ribs. I couldn’t reach
the string on the movie screen and had to ask
for help. I said, I’m wearing a brace, so I can’t
stretch. I thought of the grimace stretching
across the nurse’s face when I said, I know,
this sounds like domestic violence. It was an accident,
just goofing around. I wrapped the Velcro belt
around my ribs each morning as he ribbed me
that I should have given up, What was I trying

to prove by staying in a submission hold
until he cracked my ribs? How could I be
so stupid? So stubborn? I didn’t know he

was grooming me for greater violence,
the rock thrown at me in the car,
the wedding ring pressed so tight

by his hand holding mine that I bled.
Which brings us back to the dove,
the difference between ringing

and wringing and where language leaves us
when someone controls every word we say,
when we have no one left to talk to.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poetry will haunt you. Shaindel Beers opens with a stunner that makes you pause, then reread it again: "Language became a tricky game where saying / nothing meant everything, where saying everything / meant nothing left to fear." and "Someone might understand the bird / of my heart always crashing against the cage / of my ribs, the moth of fear fluttering / to escape from my throat." When a book of poetry starts out with a poem this powerful, you know the whole collection is going to be heartbreakingly raw and beautiful. And Shaindel doesn't disappoint. The poems build and crescendo, carrying the reader with them on a journey as beautiful as it is terrifying. Shaindel discusses love, abuse, violence, nature, desire, motherhood and trauma. She weaves back and forth between these topics, pulling you into them as you read. An excellent read, highly recommended.

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming!

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular collection from one of our great poets.

[Jacob Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal collection of poetry.

But I won't lie. I read the title of the first poem and sighed. I really did not want to go through a book of metapoetry that mused and agonized over language. Gratefully, I could not have been more wrong. The opener "The (Im)Precision of Language" absolutely squashed any and all of my fears. Yeah, the poem takes up the call to arms that all poets face at some point and tackles the wild nature of language that refuses to be complacently domesticated. But this isn't some white European dude that's been buried for a handful of centuries, this is Shaindel Beers, and she makes that very plain. In fact, this poem is endearing precisely because it counters that metalinguistic nightmare of privileged, male poets. There are stanzas here that slice to the bone, and then some. 

And this cutting continues throughout the collection. It's surgical, juxtaposing the violent hacking of the violence inherent in the poems' narratives. As a cisgender male person, books like these address the horrifyingly true reality of many, if not all women. In my long awakening to the reality of things, it is truly astonishing that women are forced to settle, or make concessions, for the awful behavior that men get away with. Secure Your Own Mask is a testament to imperative need for gender equality. And what a title with which to baptize this testament! The poem of nearly the same title is an obviously good example of this. One of my absolute favorite poems, "My heart is a diner that never closes..." (especially the second part), illustrates the surgical characteristic of the poetry's language with tight, packed lines that firmly plant the reader in a time and a place as a witness to the female experience. There are many other poems that illustrate this well, but I point out "My heart is a diner that never closes..." because it hit me hard and because instead of listing all the other poems that courageously address domestic violence, abuse, etc., I think you should just read the book. 

The latter half of the book contains longer poems, or poems divided into multiple sections. The third part of the book, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pelican," is a wonderful examination of perspective. But it is never reduced to the ol' dead white guys trope when thinking about language or perspective. Her poetry is so much more nuanced and human. Secure Your Own Mask reminds us that poetry should not be categorized as high art for the literary elite, but a necessary catharsis and ultimately a human endeavor in which the reader can feel the human experience deeply. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pelican" was the moment in which I sat back in my chair, laid down on my bed, and shed the academic reading of her poetry and read it because it is necessary. 

Part of that necessity comes from the author's ability to play with environmental/nature themes. I love the curtness of the line "I'm still not fully human - that that's why/I haven't figured human love out." from "After Mary Oliver." Yes, I understand that this line and much of the book deals with the illogical dehumanization of women, something that Shaindel Beers handles with necessary, straightforward gut-punches, but I would like to commend her ability to tackle issues of humans and nonhumans. "After Mary Oliver" is, well, after Mary Oliver, and I think that this poem beautiful illustrates the animal nature of humans and addresses the contrived idea of "Humanity."

I enjoyed the book as whole also because it is so well paced. Even some of my favorite poets sometimes will lose me as a collection continues, and I treat those moments as opportunities to take a break, or an excuse to go to bed at a decent hour. Shaindel Beers' Secure Your Own Mask is equal parts jarring, solemn, subtle, honest, and sweet. And she manages to pace all of those adjectives in a single collection. Truly a feat, in my opinion.

The entire collection is a joy to read and I highly recommend it to any reader.

[Jayant Kashyap · Rating 5 out of 5]

In true sense, it is quite strong a collection, with a variety of genres. — something that has a gravitational force of its own, enough to pull you towards itself.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, this collection...

It knocked me off of my feet. I've read a few poems by Beers before and really liked them but I don't think that I was close to ready for the power of this book. She writes with such a strong voice. The themes are dark, there are so many types of hurt. But she is above it, past it... (And yet somehow still reliving it clearly, perfectly.)

I felt so connected to her history through these poems (partially due to similar circumstances - Unfriending the Dead really clicked with me because of this but even when circumstances were so different, she so masterfully brings you into her head...).

There is such a great broad range here as well. Poems about online harassment, about wounded animals, histories of abusive men, pelicans... And every single one as powerful as the others.

Interestingly, the two longest poems in the collection are two of my favorites (and I typically am not a lover of longer poems).

Every single poem, though, is just so good. This one is worth your time and the purchase price, absolutely.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strong and moving collection, worth your time and worth giving as a gift. Shaindel's poetry is as delicate as lace or butterflies and as forceful as a kick to the chest.

[Samuel Snoek-Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Shaindel Beers's work for several years now, but even knowing what she's capable of, the first poem in this collection just flat knocked me out of my chair.

This is one of those books that will take you longer than you think to read, because every few poems, you need to set the book aside and process the beauty, the intensity, the heartache, the ferocity . . .

A powerful collection, and I one very much look forward to re-reading.

[Lennart Lundh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Secure Your Own Mask
Shaindel Beers
White Pine Press, 2018
107 pages
$16.00
ISBN 9781945680175
Reviewed by Lennart Lundh


There are books which clearly deserve the awards given them. Shaindel Beers' Secure Your Own Mask, recipient of the 2018 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, is one such from first line to last. Beers' voice is clear and consistent throughout the forty-two poems which form the book's four sections. Dealing largely with intense traumas and their echoing aftermaths, the language is intimate and frankly honest with no sign of hiding behind self-referential phrasing. The form of the poems -- a mixture of prose poems and free verse -- is not just secondary to the words' function, but largely incidental, as the poems' flow and rhythm move naturally across line and stanza breaks. Finally, the mechanics of capitalization and punctuation, as well as strong proofreading, add to the book's readability. All these points are critical to creating a successful collection, and Beers earns full marks.

The thirteen poems in the first section deal with violence and abuse in forms both personal and societal, including that of not having agency in one's own life. The opening poem, "The (Im)Precision of Language" (page 11), while almost playfully considering multiple and often contradictory meanings of words, is crystal clear when Beers explains:

he was grooming me for greater violence,
the rock thrown at me in the car,
the wedding ring pressed so tight

by his hand holding mine until I bled.

The position of the abuser as being the one in need of saving is openly rejected by the title of "Secure Your Mask Before Helping Others" (page 14), which ends in the abuser's words:

. . . though you're lucky I give you anything,
you worthless bitch.

Oh, look, here's the oxygen mask.
Here's your chance to save me.
Put it over my face and let me breathe.

"The Secret Rabbit" (page 23) neatly captures both the lack of control the narrator experiences in her life and the reason for it:

. . . The way girls were given by their fathers
to a husband to a grave and that was the only story.

. . .and me
with no way to make a world of my own because I didn't know

how.

Section two's eighteen poems focus primarily on surviving and escaping through choices that, if necessary, are neither easy nor pleasant in their execution. In "Friends, 1991" (page 35), Beers tells of being, "Scared shitless / of ending up pregnant or poor or fat / or all three." and concludes:

. . . We couldn't have
lived any different. We couldn't have saved
one another. We were just trying to survive
the only way we knew how."

"There Are No (Simple) Happy Endings" (page 36) describes the overwhelmed mother considering (self-)destructive escape routes, but ends with her opting for a saner control:

And this is where we learn
The Mother Who Left is hero / not monster.
To walk away, board the bus, step up
into the cab of the big rig, telling the trucker
Thank you. I've just got to get out of here
is the same story as giving the child love.

This epiphany grows into belief in one's self through the rest of the section, and reaches maturity with the last lines of "Playing Dolls" (page 61):

. . . Stare down
the hammer above your porcelain skull. You know your body
is misshapen from following the choreographer's uneven directions.
Now, what are you going to do to fix it?


"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pelican" (page 65) is the sole poem in the third section. Its fifteen pages concern themselves with continued growth and re-understanding after the escape from abuse. The need is clear when Beers relates:

You said, That's your problem. You always
doubt your instincts.
As a woman, I've been taught to ignore
connections. The ones between myself
and the moon, the tides
internal and external.

The mechanism is awareness and observation of the world as macrocosm and individuals within it as microcosms. Of pelicans preening, Beers ponders, "I wonder if they can hear / the frictions of their surfaces one against / the other." In an exchange between a professor and a young man, there's "the professor asking / My God, what happened?" and "the lie slipping out of his mouth / A baseball I didn't catch."

And there is growth, though the process is likely never complete. The dangerously overwhelmed mother of the early poems now tells us, "I want my son to be like that brave boy / so gentle and unafraid all at once." It's also become possible to feel the pain of strangers:

. . . someone
has spray-painted, Angela, I love you.
Fix me. It's always these moments
of public brokenness that undo me.

There is even strength to embrace the world, to ask, "What will become of all of us, if we don't listen?"

The concluding section's ten poems aren't the story's conclusion. It speaks to us about healings, as in "Prayer to the God of Small Things" (page 83),

Please let me dwell
in the smallness of this speck that disappears
when you smile. Let me weather the winds
fanned by your eyelashes.

but continues to measure the present in light of the past when Beers asks, in "Curious George Loves the Man with the Yellow Hat" (page 86), "How much of love / is love? How much the geometry of jawline / and hip ratio, search for the golden spiral?"

There is surety in hard-won wisdom to be passed on, exemplified by the closing lines of "The Old Woman in the Forest" (page 87), saying, "Heed me, my child, don't trust men who claim /
to be princes, who claim to possess golden keys." Still, "Left and Leaving, 2016" (page 99) reminds us that if body and mind have been repaired, the world has not, warning, "There is no happily after -- the fairy tales / are lies. We only have what we were able to cling to."

Ultimately, we have here a well-crafted, unblinking journey through horrors and hopes. There are, besides personal lessons for the individual reader, so many classroom settings which would benefit from Secure Your Own Mask being a major part of the syllabus. Get a copy, read it more than once, and share its beauty with others. Recall that question: "What will become of all of us, if we don't listen?"

******

About the reviewer: Lennart Lundh has published sixteen books of poetry, two short-fiction collections, and six volumes on military aviation history. His work has appeared internationally since 1965.

[Brittney Corrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shaindel Beers’s poetry resonates with vulnerability, honesty, and sheer will. In language that is alternately lyrical and startling, she lays everything bare on the page. Her truth-telling takes the form of metaphor, confession, and persona, and all are equally compelling. Together they create a window into the physical and emotional lives of women in which many of us will surely recognize ourselves. The poems in Secure Your Own Mask plunge us into the dark and then lift us back out again. Though many of these poems are tough and raw, and tinged with loneliness, they are ultimately the story of survival, and within this collection Beers has laid out a map which we can follow through the mess and beauty of our own lives.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I coloured in the bits I liked, which is the only way I know to get poetry off the page and into my head, I kept picking out in bright green the things the writer Did. She does so much, so well, and I found myself proud of her. The narrator is a capable, brilliant person, building a life in the wake of violence and cruelty, and laying claim to her house and her life and her space in a way that felt like triumph.

[Mike]

I like that this collection has in it fire and tenderness and contemplation. Beers writes about the natural world, about abusive relationships, about motherhood, about sexism, and she does it in a way that lets this book be many things while still hanging together. I particularly enjoyed the two long poems “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pelican” and “This Old House.”

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good that my own words to describe this book will not do it justice. Just read the poet's own words and trust me that it is THIS kind of good:

"Not the Little Match Girl but the whole fireworks
factory ablaze. You can watch me burn for miles,
hear about it on the national news. My every move

is a trending topic on Facebook and Twitter."

[Sofa_king · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am no reviewer of books, but you should buy and read this book. Tales of abusive relationships overcome, being a woman in America, the interplay between men and women, and the lives of pelicans. This is a moving book that I will definitely read again to savor both the content and its beautiful poetry.

[Lynne Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant collection by a brilliant poet.

My hands down favorites were “Is it Human?” and “Unfriending the Dead”

[Chad Gayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read enough contemporary poetry, and I have a habit of buying poetry books that get filed away in my bookcase, always to be read at a much later date. Shaindel Beers' Secure Your Own Mask is different, however, because I came to this book via social media, something that is happening to me more and more these days. And this is a good thing, because Secure Your Own Mask is a journey worth taking. These are poems that are very much of the moment, without being bound to it; they are never confessional a la Anne Sexton (who is still one of my favorites), but they are grounded in a woman's outlook on the world. Terrible things can happen in that world, terrible things that are sometimes beyond the author's understanding or control, but she finds ways of coping, of looking into herself and others and her surroundings in lines that remind me, alternately, of the work of Mary Oliver and Stanley Kunitz.

Highly recommended.

[Berry's Poetry Book Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heed the title Secure Your Own Mask and follow its instructions, readers, before cracking the spine of Shaindel Beers' fantastically executed poetic savagery. Her 2018 collection, published through the non-profit literary publisher White Pine Press, is chock full of writing talent and insight into the inseparable swirling atoms of beauty and cruelty that are nasty, necessary components in this thing called life.

Read the full review here: https://poets.media/fantastically-exe...

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Once, I wanted to be // the last thing you’d want to throw on a gas fire. / Then, I wanted to be the first. Now, I am learning // to be the fire itself.” (“The Con Man’s Wife”)

BOOM.

Oh, and “Playing Dolls” was extraordinary. I could read that poem ten times and still get that visceral thrill.

“I am Not a Narrative for Your Entertainment” is also quite good and is something every woman needs to study, print out, tape to her mirror, and remember.

Well done!

[Geoff Munsterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can read it cover to cover and not encounter one rough line. This is a nearly-flawless collection. I'd say more but fear being labeled a fanboy (which, guilty). Secure Your Own Mask belongs on a lot of shelves and only gains in depth and gradient upon re-reading.

[M Delea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, and I got to hear the poet read from it in June of 2019. There is both humor and heart in these poems and a love of language that comes through in word play (to me, word play and language love are the most important qualities for poets). The poems are accessible and lively. I recommend!