Though We Bled Meticulously

In his debut collection, Fomon interrogates the extent to which language is able to represent memory; in doing so, he comments on the divide between the linguistic and the corporeal. The work explores and resides in the state of "being plural/ like waves to moon%E2%80%94never ceased, never reached," in which the mind and body might be in conflict. The book is really one long, sprawling poem composed of interconnected, though often quite distinct, sections. This fractured yet lively approach seems to acknowledge the futility of using words to confront the traumatic. The reader must accept that, in this world, "We will say that the human mind was not made/ for precision. That words were not put there/ for believing." The highly self-conscious and sometimes disaffected voice tries and fails to come to grips with its own history; frustration, longing, and melancholy, rather than celebration, define the mood. Employing a finely tuned ear that's more interested in music than sense, Fomon is unafraid to break with grammar to cut to the meat of the matter: the messiness of being and bleeding, or, as he puts it, "The ebb// all around how we am growing black gardens, thick pools of shadows/ til they bloom." (May)