Path of Totality: Poems

by Niina Pollari

Exploring the sudden loss of her child, the hope that precedes this crisis, and the suffering that follows, this collection of poetry renders a shattering experience with candor and immediacy.

This collection is about the eviscerating loss of a child, the hope that precedes this crisis, and the suffering that follows. Spare, plain, sometimes startling in their snatches of humor, Pollari's poems careen into the "tilted reality" of grief. This is poetry dredged from shock and rage, then dissected with pointillistic precision.

Many of the pieces are closer to in plain, forceful, language that will capture readers outside the poetry audience, they uncover and name sentiments outside of what is expected in books about child loss and for instance, the embarrassment Niina felt for letting herself feel hope and joy, for revealing that she desired to be a mother at all, and for having to inform the world that her desire would not be granted.

A shattering experience rendered with candor and immediacy, Path of Totality is a book "for anyone who ever expected anything" about a rarely told experience of motherhood.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Parenting, Nonfiction

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 8, 2022

About the author

Author of two poetry collections, Path of Totality (2022) and Dead Horse (2015). Not here a whole lot.

Reviews

[johnny ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"a grief tour."

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

PATH OF TOTALITY by Niina Pollari is a remarkable book! I loved this poetry book! This collection revolves around the sudden loss of her child and explores grief and motherhood in heartbreaking prose. Usually I like to read books quickly but with this one I had to stop several times as these poems were so emotional. At the end this book left me in tears. I loved this powerful writing! My fave poems are Maternity Coat and Desire to Live.
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And I love the details in the striking cover designed by House of Thought. The matte cover is bisected by a glossy ombré yellow line and has engraved text which makes this cover not only appealing to the eye but also a joy to touch.
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!

[Kate Durbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gutted me in the best possible way. Even though I have not experienced the grief of losing a child, I felt there was such a generosity to Pollari's grief in this book, the way she articulates it, that it spills out and encompasses everything, including me as the reader.

[Karlen HK · Rating 5 out of 5]

*An ARC of this book was provided to me by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.*

I know I am biased, as a bereaved mother, reading this book written by another bereaved mother. But Pollari puts into words many feelings I was never able to express, or things I expressed only to myself, or maybe to those absolutely closest to me and my son. Reading her poems pressed on a wound that is a bit older now, and the fact that the pain still sings out and brings tears is both crushing and also the most reassuring feeling. It has been a while since I connected in this way with something written about the experience of losing a child. I am heartbroken that the author must also live with this, but I deeply appreciate her ability to write so beautifully about something so devastating, and to make some of us feel a bit more understood.

As a librarian, I do not often buy books for myself. I am proud to say I have preordered this one, and look forward to rereading the hard copy.

[Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

5⭐
Wow!

I wasn't aware of Niina Pollari's work prior to this, but having read "Path of Totality" I am such a fan of her as a poet and a human being. Her recounting such a powerful moment in her life is so brave and inspiring, I marvel at her ability to fully encompass the human experience around grief, change, and all facets of love. Side note: "Embarrassed" really did something to me; jaw=dropped.

[Tamar · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this poem nobody is a killer / Even though we have all killed before / Ruthlessly or absentmindedly or out of fear / The spider you smashed with a book / That threw its front legs up / Before you flattened it / Its protest so human / That you thought about it for days / Remembering yourself as newly ruthless / And despite the spider / This poem contains no killers / But neither is anyone in this poem / Known as a victim / Though we have all held our shoes in the cooling night / And waited for a taxi and maybe cried / And when the cabbie stops for cigarettes / At the gas station and asks you if you need anything / You say no but it feels like a lie

Happiness is real only once you leave it behind

Someone with nothing at stake will always ask you for your intimate details.

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

gutting, heartbreaking, spectacular

[K.C. Bratt-Pfotenhauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Niina Pollari’s “Path of Totality,” grief is, as the title suggests, total and unsparing. The book itself is the black drag of grief, the aftereffect of a child leaving the earth well before their time. The poems are pure and eviscerating, even to a reader like me who has never undergone that particular pain.

Pollari executes the lyricism of grief deftly; these poems about grief are also poems about New York geography, about coffee shops. Even as she warns the reader to bite back their questions in the poem “White Blood Cells,” there’s still that undercurrent of pleading with the reader to acknowledge that loss in the same poem: “Before you say anything, I can feel your question leaving your body and coming toward me like an odor that you release. It walks up to my door. It kicks over my talisman with its soft feet.” And then: “I practice saying “Yes, I have a daughter.” But when I open my mouth, something else starts to come out. I suck it back in. I hope nobody will ever ask, but then I hope someone asks. I hope more than anything.”

Other readers have already pointed to Pollari’s generosity in sharing her experience and letting the reader inside an incredibly devastating chapter of her life, but I will reiterate it. These poems are raw, a live wire in the best, most heartbreaking way. This was my first time reading anything by Pollari, but rest assured, it will not be the last.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this incredible book.

[Amy Grimm · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing, heart wrenching, beautiful book! It's hard to articulate the effect these poems had on me. The author has written about the devastating loss of her first daughter at birth. In some hands this topic of such deep grief could become maudlin and merely depressing. But Niina Pollari's poems are so open, raw and accessible that they are a gift to the reader. There is love here, and grief, and the path forward through it. This is a book of poetry for everyone, not just people who "read poetry". There is no outsize drama, just a calmness in the articulation of catastrophic loss and the way through it. "I can look toward the future if I want to/And sometimes I do/I glance across the smoky barrier/At the winking eye of what's to come/Even though it causes me pain to move farther away/From what I consider the most emotionally significant event of my life/And I can't see the future anyway/I can only see my assumption of it/Optimistic yet fatal/I consider myself a positive person/Yes after everything.
All I can say is read this book. You will be changed by it. I have no words that can adequately describe the magic of these poems.
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[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A visceral collection of poems about Pollari's sudden loss of a child either thru miscarriage or stillbirth. I would say the author was able to put into words what so many others, who have suffered similarly, are unable to do. The trauma and grief she experienced is ongoing and though it may not be something we've all experienced, her words allow us to empathize,

"My love, how can I tell anybody what I mean? That you were born, and that I held you. That when you were born, I was the one who died."

[Natalia Weissfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

When all you need is to sit down with a book and a pencil..
PATH OF TOTALITY by Nina Pollari .Thank you Ssoft Skull Press for sending me this timely poems collection.
This heartwarming poems are about grief and irreparable loss in our lives and how, in the aftermath of a huge pain, we find the way to keep going. Thank you Nina Pollari for sharing your pain and for being able to transform it into beauty.

[Gerard · Rating 2 out of 5]

mood after reading: heavyhearted

The book contains a lot of tales regarding pain and suffering. Reading the author's shared experience of the agony of losing a child is not enough, and we cannot truly comprehend how it feels as we are not the ones who have gone through it. It's tough to put into words how I felt after finishing the book, but I feel anyone who has experienced various forms of pain would relate to it. 

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most moving and astonishing books I've ever read.

[Abby Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a poem is looking inside of something, I’ve been dissecting all my life. And for what? I left behind so many bodies, even my own. I walked away from myself, and the body I used to own was taken somewhere. Someone else said “Open,” and then they cut.

[jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me describe the sky to you

finished this in the flow facility basement lmao very fitting. the poems set really mundane language to the profound intrinsic empty of the world. i felt hollowed // got to lean into my hollow. it isn't flashy. we could be talking. the inner monologue's persistent decay. yada yada yada

The forlorn truth about me is / That I'm the one who loves you / I have no belief / I have no rage /I just do this / I just have to

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary book of poetry confronting life through loss.

[Hibou le Literature Supporter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended by poet/essayist Elisa Gabbert, and goes beyond even that. A unique blend of hope/sadness/desperation and how to make sense of the world that works differently from the way you were told it works.

"The devil dwells in doorways because exits are the devil's domain."

"And the sky dragged the ocean like a dress
Stars rising from the hem of it"

[Kate (reeder_reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preorder this beautiful poetry collection, people!!! Stunning, vulnerable, moving, tragic…all of the emotions and all of the stars.

Thank you Netgalley and Soft Skull publishing for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am terrified all the time

I am filled with fear in the face of beautiful things

The most beautiful thing I ever saw has made me the most afraid

And the fear has never left me

(from “Megalophobia”)

[Luke Hillier · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I am terrified all the time / I am filled with fear in the face of beautiful things / The most beautiful thing I ever saw has made me the most afraid / And the fear has never left me."

It felt fitting to read this today as the 2024 eclipse occurred overhead. Pollari's collection, remarkable and painful, is stunning in both senses of the word. She lays herself bare across the pages here to give witness to one of the most intimate and excruciating of human experiences: the loss of her child. "Desire to Live" features a devastating reflection on how her birth-day had begun as one of the best in Pollari's life before also confronting her with "the worst thing [she's] ever experienced." This sort of complexity ripples through the book, eschewing bow-tied conclusions in favor of the wild and raw realities of seismic grief. Pollari utilizes imagery of natural disasters, fantastical figures, and the titular eclipse to effectively convey the enormity of her feelings, the ways in which her daughter was "beautiful and world-ending."

Many of the poems are written in a matter-of-fact and even detached voice, holding out such vulnerable moments at a distance, and the contrast between tone and content imbues subtle statements with a surprising gut-punch quality (e.g. "Thirteen days ago, I saw the smallest hand"). In this sense, they brought to mind the most grounded and clear of Molly Brodak's work. There are also a number of prose poems that read like essays (comparable to those in Bluets), allowing for more specificity and elaboration. "Love," describing the jolts Pollari's body sent her in the weeks after birth to find and attend to her child, is equally heartbreaking and hopeful. "Embarrassment" offers insight into the sense of humiliation she felt after her daughter died and how that contributed to her alienation. And "Pain and Suffering" is a searing reflection on how Pollari was coached to anticipate the pain of childbirth and differentiate it from suffering, only to be engulfed in the suffering of her loss.

There are a handful included that felt more tangential to the focus and less impactful, but the majority are stellar. Beyond those already named, I also loved "White Blood Cells," "Self-Portrait as New York Geography," "Obligatory Hematophage," "Ursa Minor," "Interim," "Path of Totality," "The Devil is Standing Between Me and the Life I Want," Desire to Live," Megalophobia," and "Sunflower." This collection will undoubtedly stay with me, and more importantly it will inform my work as a pediatric chaplain caring for mothers navigating the start of a similar journey as Pollari's depicted so generously here.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parmenides had this theory that everything was one. Everything was a weave into this oneness being-thing. And I never understood whether that oneness was supposed to be thick or thin. So I imagined it thick, always everywhere, always making it weird that I can even move my arms and legs if there’s this always-being-oneness around me. Now make the oneness grief, which is a thickened existing on its own. Grief that presses into a body, a coercive force, and you get the setting for Niina Pollari’s book. A oneness of poems where the body is woven into grief. Like a book of love poetry, Couplets, say, where love is persistent and overwhelming and a blur of multifaceted things happening. Pollari was “expecting,” as she puts it in her poem, “Urine Season.” It’s a great word for that extra pressure expectation has during pregnancy. Everything is anticipated, everything points to an entirely new parenting life. For a woman, the body is defining itself into this other oneness, and experiencing another oneness inside.

And to lose the string of events that are supposed to extend past the pregnancy is just one of the moments Pollari’s book dwells upon. What is grief as an emotional concept? I remember hearing a friend from grad school had suffered a still birth, and I was sad. I hadn’t known her beyond her and I being with other friends over drinks, but there was something about this experience that revealed what I hadn’t known about her before. A resilience. There is an understood tragedy when you hear someone has suffered a still birth, and now I knew this friend in light of the disappointment and death of that moment. Pollari’s book thinks about what grief is right then. A genuine wish to die. Doubts about past moments that might have been signals of something you couldn’t possibly know about. Does the poet have any say about how grief continues to live with her? Pollari compounds her grief in these poems by running alongside other emotions, like embarrassment. How this can magnify the grief that is suffused throughout the book. And the surprise that no matter how persistent the grief is, it can still occur to the poet as something simultaneously fresh and enduring. Grief as a pressure attending the person for so long. And grief as freshly inflicted wound the poems will endeavor to express further.

And it’s truly that Parmenides Oneness idea, where every natural moment reveals its own commentary about the poet’s grief. Even seeing a crow respond to seeing a dead crow by calling out, or reading about an orca carrying her dead calf for seventeen days, everything in the world seems to understand this loss, even as the loss feels like the most personally isolating experience the poet could register.

[gracie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this poem you can think
Of the memories you never had
Till they feel like memories you really had
And in this poem
It's fine
To have had those memories

i keep stumbling into poetry books written by mothers who have lost a child either before or during or immediately after birth, and this is a grief i have no context for. i find myself feeling protective of a “truer” grief, the grief of losing someone you know, as opposed to losing an idea, an expectation, a promise. and then i wonder why my idea of grief is so scarce, if i don’t understand other ways of knowing, body-knowing. i accept all that i do not know and yet i fight the page, etc. i am wary of the ways we project onto children, flatten them, love them incompatibly, love them without being curious about them. i am both resentful towards and scared of pregnancy, that my body can do that, that it seems to be the only thing about me sometimes that spiritually matters. felt like i was fighting to breathe a lot of this book. many poems were really lovely (people have sad stories, how to read this poem, life force, at the drowned river, self portrait as new york geography, i’m sorry). wondering if my instinct to cower away from poetry about pregnancy grief is a type of cruelty - towards the author and/or towards myself

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense collection; did not know the author, who lost her first child at birth, but will read more, was impressed by the intensity of emotions conveyed; a few excerpts;

"At the hospital, I had a catheter. It leaked on the bed, on the sheets, against my legs. Someone came in and asked where my baby was, not seeing the decal on the door. I have never felt as helpless."

"I wanted to write a true poem.
I started with a fact: She had soft hair.
I know because I touched my chin to it when I held her.
The truth is that when I held her, neither of us cried."

"All I have are facts and memories. Facts are things that cannot be changed, and memories are impressions of a time when I did not yet know my own face contorted like this. Facts are: Her weight and length. Memories are: My loneliness. After the fact, I invent a narrative. I see the story, its rising action, its fall. We all do this."

"The forlorn truth about me is
That I’m the one who loves you
I have no belief
I have no rage
I just do this
I just have to"

[andré crombie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A polluted estuary

With the prosaic name East River

Creeps against the shoreline

Let me describe the sky to you

The sky is high and creamy-metallic with birds like vanilla flecks

On the other side the monoliths stand crowded and vertical

It’s beautiful if you have the capacity to appreciate beauty

It’s beautiful like order

Or like the satisfaction

Of a met expectation

Notes: Starts powerfully, with great intensity, but meanders and loses the thread. Another collection of good poems brought down, for me, by big chunks of formally mushy narration.

[Dora Prieto · Rating 5 out of 5]

STUNNING. I cried multiple times in this collection, and every tear was worth the existential depth of the speaker. The speaker's experiences are shown to the degree that they situate the work, which allows the reader greater focus on the artfulness, the creativity and consistency of form. I'm left haunted by the echos of the "path of totality,"—in the table of contents, in the form, on the cover, and in the experience of reading such a deep and earnest work. <3

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A blind spot burned into my retina. A permanent hole, like film chewed up by heat.” (Pg.124).

Pollari does a great job of encapsulating grief: the before, during and after of it all. The way she talks about carrying this past around, of this one day eclipsing the rest of her life, and everything that came before it, is so true and powerful. There are some things one can never accept or understand, a permanent hole that doesn’t go away.

[Diana Arterian · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many remarkable things about this collection, but above all, for this reader, the sense of intimacy we are allowed in Pollari's experiences of grief and the paradigm shift for her in the aftermath of loss. It is quiet in many ways, but Pollari's language and images pulse with undeniable with intensity.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotes (unformatted)

I'm not saying
That I've totally changed
That lived experience makes you more real
Or that you need to be sad in order to make things
But I recall myself from years ago like an image
Of someone I no longer wish to be around (8)

And as I clasp my hand into yours
Let's close the emptiness between our palms
And force out the distance
Till there isn't one (24)

[Sal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The grief of having loved someone so much and having it stolen from you, a thread taken from your own quilt, before you could grasp what could have been, and left with the many what ifs… in this Pollari shares lost motherhood and the legacy of what should have been

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

"After the party, in the crystal dark, I turned into a monument. My head rolled off from my neck and sank into the gravel. My body stood up like a statue, and the tongue in my laughing mouth was stone now. It no longer bled." Heart-wrenching, visceral poems.