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ABC Moonlight
With mounting intensity extended across three sections of poems, Ben Estes' achingly personal second collection unfolds to reveal an uncertain past, present, and future that is by turns mysterious and beautiful. ABC Moonlight contains poems that are filled with reflective awareness and subconsciously constructed dreams; a sweeping landscape of queer Midwestern loss and desire; and pairs of "folded poems" that question love, hope, and vulnerability in our current times. Rather than prescribing answers, Estes offers the reader intimacy and open-handed, big-hearted consolation—"Now to let something go / of myself, / without any need / to replace it"
91 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 22, 2022
There is this moment about midway through Estes' book where I started thinking about the traditional pastoral poem. The one where shepherds are passing the time by listening to one of them, or all of them in turn, tell a story. Maybe it's someone they all know. Maybe it's someone the storyteller knows, and, OMG, you should have seen that post of theirs on Instagram. However it is, the poem stands in as this reasonable entertainment, and the poet along with his listeners are having a reasonably good time while their sheep wander around. I liked this frame for Estes book, partly because he mentions "a Shepherd's Hour" in one of the folded poems. And partly because there is ambient quality to the nature appearing in the poems. Present but not too loudly present. Nature informs the logic of the poems.
But, also, as the book moves towards the ending, nature also steps outside the frame. Or at least a discernible representative nature. Nature becomes kind of like that one dream poem where there is a forest of fake trees, but the poet and his friends are wandering through looking for the real trees, because the real trees are grave markers. This pattern, from poet-in-nature to poet-exploring-human-nature, was the primary trend line I followed through the book. And it felt good reading into that, and feeling the book fulfilled that reading.
Admittedly, the book is a little soupy. Like it takes a generous stretch to connect the "folded poems" in the opening of the book to the dream-poems appearing in "A Shadow Theater." But thinking about nature, thinking about how people's perspective will often start getting in the way of actually enjoying nature, and this latter frame of mind coming out through dreams, this is compelling!
But, also, as the book moves towards the ending, nature also steps outside the frame. Or at least a discernible representative nature. Nature becomes kind of like that one dream poem where there is a forest of fake trees, but the poet and his friends are wandering through looking for the real trees, because the real trees are grave markers. This pattern, from poet-in-nature to poet-exploring-human-nature, was the primary trend line I followed through the book. And it felt good reading into that, and feeling the book fulfilled that reading.
Admittedly, the book is a little soupy. Like it takes a generous stretch to connect the "folded poems" in the opening of the book to the dream-poems appearing in "A Shadow Theater." But thinking about nature, thinking about how people's perspective will often start getting in the way of actually enjoying nature, and this latter frame of mind coming out through dreams, this is compelling!
Displaying 1 of 1 review