Book review: Two new collections from Alaska poets — 'Breaking into Air' by Emily Wall and 'tender gravity' by Marybeth Holleman — are divergent but complementary, and lay the groundwork for reclaiming our humanity.
“Breaking into Air: Birth Poems”By Marybeth Holleman; Boreal Books/Red Hen Press, 2022; 88 pages; $16.95.
One poem, “Shaawatke’e’s Birth,” draws from X’unei Lance Twitchell’s telling of a daughter’s birth. But it is more than that; it is also about the preciousness and necessity of language and incorporates passages of Tlingit translated in footnotes. Another found poem, “What Does a Fetal Heartbeat Sound Like” collects the exact words of those who responded to the question Wall posted on Facebook. “Like feet running on wet sand./Like horses/galloping horses/like a hummingbird/a hundred hummingbirds in a snowstorm.” This poem leads off the entire collection, introducing the idea that the project is a collaborative one and that every person had different — and often beautifully expressed — experiences to share.
Holleman, similar to Wall, begins with a “heartbeat” poem. “The Beating Heart, Minus Gravity” speaks of a dream of diving “to the blue depth/and rising, rising, following/bubble after bubble, seeing/golden sunlight glinting above/but never reaching/no matter how hard i kick/the tender gravity of air.” This sets an expectation for an immersion into humility before nature and its infinite mysteries.
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