After Image
Jenny George. Copper Canyon, $17 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-55659-695-7
George (Asterisk) examines in her stunning third collection the space left by the death of a loved one—not an emptiness, but a collection of artifacts and memories, a world that suddenly takes on new meaning. The collection’s title suggests the overlaying of a new existence over the speaker’s old one, but recently enough that a past image remains visible as an outline. Fragments of the deceased still pulse with life in a photograph, and the memory of a snowstorm is described as “The air a world/ of cold white bees.” In other arresting moments, George describes a striking tableau of the body of the deceased: “Hands folded like a bride. Dark cave/ of the mouth, open.” Life’s ongoing nature is at times a comfort, at times unimaginable to the speaker: “The earth goes on without me./ It’s humiliating./ Peony shoots pushing their purple faces/ out of the ground.” In the brilliantly disconcerting “Autobiography of a Vulture,” death sustains life: “I hatched from the void./ Crawled into the glow/ on my pinhooks, craving meat./ The first scrap unlocked my throat./ All of us in the nest/ open and swaying for it—/ little death flowers.” This is a monumental work on death and grieving in a deceptively slim package. (Oct.)
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Reviewed on: 01/07/2025
Genre: Poetry