Vexations – poems – Annelyse Gelman

Vexations
poems, Annelyse Gelman
The University of Chicago Press, 2023
annelysegelman.com

~

Whatever it is you've been trying to say, or hear, can probably be found in the interior stoppages and outbound etymologies of Annelyse Gelman's spiritually forwarded Vexations in which the current devours the recent but goes on to imagine that it’s eaten a de-aged now and so becomes terrified of the present. Born invented, it ended so many times I ran out of weeping. Rooted in the everyday that has to relive with itself, it's a hard book to finish once. I found things because things were everywhere and I found things because they disappeared twice. With its snapshots of acceptance, vacated visions, and exiting accumulations, the verse makes of the moment an inquiry that speech isn't normally asked to speak for. A password, here, seems to know our password and Gelman creates access from a de-awed strangeness and discovers elsewhere as the anchor of locale. It looks like the world. It looks like my misunderstanding of the world. Illusions offer safe passage to holograms. Mirages aid in the evacuation of hallucinations. I look sometimes at my children as data sets of worry. I can't say how briefly I long for each. Vexations gives measure, and leaves one with a closeness glowing for the losses of its following.

~

reflection by Barton Smock         

~

book is HERE