In the poem “ Portrait of a Body in Pause,” Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch says they keep “hitting command + F to make sure pain makes up less than 10% of [their] word count.” They then document 22 words that come up frequently throughout the collection that characterize their chronic pain. Knot Body is a little project that is part memoir, part essay, part poetry collection (often prose poetry) that establishes a clear focus that elevates its personal-focus above Instapoet contemporaries.
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch offers a distinct perspective. Pulling from the bio at the end of the book, I’d note that they are a queer Arab poet living in unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. While the poems touch somewhat on being Arab, most of the focus is on being trans and living with the chronic pain of fibromyalgia (and also exposing some of the transphobic practices in diagnosis (apparently fibromyalgia is a woman’s disease). El Bechelany-Lynch writes in a conversational style, indeed sometimes with direct address to the audience. Many of the poems start with the line, “Dear friends, lover, and in-betweens” and proceed through an epistolary mode that lends it a personable quality (although the poet notes in one poem that they make a distinct attempt to ride the line of fictionalized autobiography.)
Many of the sections address what the pain is like, how it affects relationships with others, and how it interacts with other aspects of the poet’s identity. The collection is insightful and asks some challenging questions about how we interact with others who have chronic pain and invisible disabilities. The conversational style is sometimes peppered with more explicitly poetic passages, but what the collection does best is offer an account of personal experience. It’s a document in a life that can promote empathy, understanding, and connection. Allow it to expand your perspective.
Happy reading!
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