Ripatrazone’s presentation of a few carefully chosen imagistic motifs proves to be impressive as the collection unfolds. Frequently invoking the ephemera associated with popular culture—including bumper stickers, Westerns, and the occasional V.H.S. tape—Ripatrazone’s poems use these objects to mirror, and often complicate, the narratives he constructs for characters within the book. He does not attempt to draw clear boundaries between the inner lives of these characters and the cultural artifacts that surround them, but rather, he embraces the permeable boundaries of the self. He writes in “Good Morning,”

The Westclox AM/FM digital radio
had a cassette recorder: my father
taped the bass line of “Good Times”
and then scratchy Robert Plant,
but one weekend he had us,
my brother and I captured his
snoring… (41)

Here Ripatrazone suggests the myriad ways in which the individual’s experience is mediated by shared culture, its rituals, and its various artifacts. “Good Morning” subtly suggests the ways that one may subvert these received ideas about the world, thus claiming agency over culture. Yet Ripatrazone adeptly problematizes such an interpretation by interspersing this personal narrative with brand-names, implying that even acts of subversion are mediated by the society one inhabits. This is Not About Birds is filled with finely crafted poems like this one, which lend themselves to multiple careful readings.

Ripatrazone’s use of the persona poem to explore these recurring themes proves equally impressive. He frequently underscores the commonalities between different individuals’ experiences, suggesting that popular culture wields a somewhat homogenizing influence. Yet the book also suggests the myriad ways that individuality manifests itself within this sea of “V.H.S. tapes,” “strip joints,” and “Pilates.” Ripatrazone’s best work explores this intersection of individual and collective consciousness. He explains in a piece entitled “Crossing,” written in the voice of a high school swim team member,

We idled in the Oldsmobile while the cargo
train slowed forward. I paged through
his Frye catalog and recognized his pair among
Earthen Clay, Burnt Chestnut, Hand Stained
Brown. Each stood against backgrounds
of mountains and rivers. He asked
if I liked boots but my answer
was lost under the shuddering rails. (22)

Ripatrazone presents us the detritus of a consumer economy—a landscape littered with Oldsmobiles and shoe catalogues—yet also suggests that this glittering ephemera retains a dark side. Just as the character in the poem fails to fit within this paradigm because of his sexual orientation, the poem suggests that alienation proves inevitable for those who are part of collective. This theme surfaces throughout the poems, as hunters, daredevils, and swimmers find themselves at turns accepted by and estranged from the people who surround them. In many ways, Ripatrazone’s use of the persona poem illustrates for the reader the many forms that alienation can take. His presentation of a single theme becomes increasingly complex and multifaceted as the book unfolds. As a result, the myriad voices within the manuscript retain a wonderful sense of unity when considered as a whole. Nick Ripatrazone’s This is Not About Birds is a spectacular new addition to this writer’s body of work, as finely crafted as it is insightful—a truly remarkable book.

Related Posts:

• The Moon and Other Inventions: Poems After Joseph Cornell by Kristina Marie Darling
• Reluctant Mistress by Anne Champion
• “Melancholia (An Essay)” by Kristina Marie Darling
• Rise in the Fall by Ana Božičević
• Desolation: Souvenir by Paul Hoover

Champion’s use of traditional literary forms proves impressive as the book unfolds. My favorite poems in Reluctant Mistress create a sense of discontinuity between style and subject matter, presenting subversive content within received forms, which have been used most frequently by male writers addressing a silent female “beloved.” Champion’s poems strive to show the reader that these arcane courtship rituals, and the way in which we represent them in literature, still inform contemporary relationships in unexpected ways. Consider “Villanelle for Past Lovers”:

I cherish all the lovers in my past.
Some say it’s my greatest flaw.
A broken love is not meant to last.

I line them all up in my mind-an unlucky cast-
repeatedly playing their parts unrehearsed and raw.
I can’t stop loving the lovers in my past.

Here Champion presents a subversive message within a received literary form. By doing so, she skillfully revises the gendered power relations inherent in traditional love poetry. The female beloved is no longer silent, nor passive. Likewise, monogamy is no longer the ideal for the heroine of this story. Champion ultimately re-imagines what is possible for female characters within the love lyric, expanding the parameters of traditional forms like the villanelle. Like many other poems in Reluctant Mistress, “Villanelle for Past Lovers” proves as thoughtful as it is finely crafted.

Along these lines, Champion’s poems frequently give voice to voiceless characters from this master narrative. Mythical figures like Daphne and Psyche deliver beautifully written soliloquies, suggesting that Reluctant Mistress should be read, at least in part, as a corrective gesture, an attempt to recover parts of literary history that have been lost or overlooked. Champion writes, for instance, in “Daphne, Upon Transformation,”

Finally. These veins have turned
to roots, soaking nourishment from the earth
with stoic self-reliance, no longer needing

the channels that course in others
seeking passion

In passages like this one, Champion draws attention to a character who inhabits the margins of a predominantly male master narrative, ultimately asking us to reconsider what aspects of myth, culture, and history we fixate on. What’s more, the poet situates contemporary mistresses, young girls who eschew marriage, and women who take pleasure in sensual experience within this trajectory of silenced female voices. Reluctant Mistress draws our attention to the cultural mechanisms that cause us to relegate these stories to the margins, offering readers provocative social criticisms while maintaining lyricism and a sense of humor throughout. In short, Anne Champion’s first book is a truly wonderful debut.

Related Posts:

• This is Not About Birds by Nick Ripatrazone
• The Moon and Other Inventions: Poems After Joseph Cornell by Kristina Marie Darling
• “Melancholia (An Essay)” by Kristina Marie Darling
• Rise in the Fall by Ana Božičević
• Desolation: Souvenir by Paul Hoover