Bright Glint Gone

by Suzanne Langlois

Bright Glint Gone is the winner of the 2019 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Chapbook Award. The collection centers around connection and separateness, both the desire for and the fear of intimacy. The poems explore the risks inherent in loving any creature that lives in a body, as all bodies are subject to aging and eventual annihilation, whether it be due to natural processes or to climate crisis.

Genres: Poetry

52 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Ken]

The 2020 winner of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Chapbook contest, Bright Glint Gone offers a collection of poems that revel in wordplay, metaphor, and personification. But you might not notice that so much because you're too caught up in the voice of a young woman navigating the world of life and death, love and sadness, wistfulness and wisdom.

For example, the poem "Truism" seems scripted by the 2020 presidential election. It should be taped to the well-used mirror of a certain Orange Creature in Maro Lago for daily reflection (he could have someone read it to him):


Truisms

A lie, no matter how many times
we tell it, is not truth. A lie
repeated is a secondhand lie.
A lie a million people believe
is a popular lie. A lie we forget
is a lie is a delusion. A lie
someone powerful wishes
were true is a well-funded lie,
not a well-founded truth.
We can't vote a lie true.
We can't overturn the truth.
The truth does not require
our support to be true.
It can hold itself up. It stands
tall before us even now,
even as we refuse to see it.


Langlois shows her all-too human side often in these works. "Sleepless" tells the always unique yet always familiar story of love gone wrong and lovers being the last to accept those wrongs. It also gives the chapbook its title. Listen in:

Sleepless

He is a fistful of gravel thrown
at my bedroom window--a blinding
lamp left burning on the nightstand,

a hand that keeps dragging me
back from the threshold of sleep
only to dissolve the moment

my senses are crisp enough
to distinguish between a wish
and his skin against mine.

I know the sting of his name
will eventually fade, but now
it leaves me tender as a bruise,

and here it is, that trickle
of forgiveness--a grayed rope
I shouldn't reach for, but do.

My friends roll their eyes, his name
a lie they've grown tired of, a poorly
told story. Still, it fevers my tongue,

a glowing coal I keep dropping
into conversations to watch the ripples
spread as it sinks into the past--
its bright glint already gone.


Finally, Langlois is willing to "break" certain unwritten rules in poetry, like Thou Shalt Not Write about Dead Pets. It's a cliché trap if ever there was one, which marks her bravery all the more as she writes this elegy for a lost best friend:

Elegy for a Dog

The creature I loved has been unmade.
Every part of her, down to her whiskers,
vanished from the planet.

I miss her song--the way
she'd point her muzzle at the ceiling,
turn her black lips into an O,
and pour a moan through it.

Today I learned all the things
I can do while howling.
I can stand up or lie down.
I can rock back and forth on my haunches,
tip my head back and empty my throat.

Still, the open grave in my chest
holds her body and wishes itself a cradle.
The last time I put my hands on her belly
I felt it swell with a grief about to be born,
her body a honeycomb filled with rot
--all that sweetness wasted.

I think of the words I tried to teacher her:
sit, lie down, sing,
stay, stay, stay, stay.

All in all, a dense and rich collection worthy of reading, then rereading because you want to stay.

[Emily Jane Young]

Oh how I loved this collection. Langlois's writing is elegant and witty and peppered with enticing metaphors and new words, but it's also very accessible, grounded, relatable. And every poem hits something in me. There's one in here called "Elegy for a Dog" that I've read many times before, as it was included in two collections before this book, and it makes me cry every time. Not, like, tear up. More like close my eyes and clutch my chest and have to close the book for a minute.

They aren't all sad though. Only some. I can't recommend Bright Glint Gone highly enough.

[Megan Alyse]

Stunning Collection! Langlois is a master of capturing perception in a personal and expansive way. Linguistically lovely. Incredibly moving.

[KCelery]

Absolutely gorgeous. Every poem is something to marvel at and sit with.