We Had To Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets

    In my mind, when writing We Had To Remove This Post, Hanna Bervoets had a critical choice to make. Providing real-world news stories in a bibliography, the novel is about the dark world of online content moderation and it seems to me the central question is how to grapple with the terrible, unrelenting barrage of awful content. It would be tempting to emulate a deluge of graphic horrors, like Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, but Bervoets resists the allure, favouring a minimalistic approach over the draw of maximalism.

    In fact, the novel starts with a deconstruction of its own audience. The opening question is “So what kinds of things did you see?” (1) and the narrator, Kayleigh, criticizes the people in her life (a formerly estranged aunt, a new colleague, even her therapist) for prying into the horrors, continually wanting to know the most disturbing thing she ever saw. Everyone wants to know how dark it is in the depths, and I think Bervoets plays on the audience’s sadism. We, too, want to know how dark content moderation can get, and Bervoets’ minimalism seems to be an act of resistance. She will not feed the darkness within us.

    The novel uses a framing device wherein Kayleigh addresses the reader directly. In turn, the reader is positioned as Mr. Stitic, a lawyer working on a class action lawsuit against Hexa, a thinly-veiled version of Facebook whose horrible working conditions sparked PTSD in a number of its former employees. Kayleigh passes information along tactfully to influence the case, remaining vague when possible. The framing device itself is clever because we are essentially placed in the role of judge—a content moderator of sorts—evaluating whether to admit Kayleigh’s testimony.

    Kayleigh herself is an unreliable narrator of sorts. I won’t spoil the ending of this short novella, but there is a moment that calls into question the reliability of her account. There’s a moment where she is encouraged to record herself in an intimate act at work with her girlfriend. It’s posited as an erotic gesture which is later granted an entirely new significance, which is a clever twist. Even when the twist is revealed, it is understated: the key detail is implied but not replicated directly; Bervoets refuses to delve into the deepest horrors. The very end of the book continues in the minimalist vein. Kayleigh resorts to an ill-conceived plan with some horrific implications and, at the moment she realizes it, she asks herself, “What the hell am I doing?” (134). Finis. 

    Moments like that make me wonder whether maximalism would have been a better approach. The suggestion of the fallout is a cliffhanger to end on, but I would love to have read more. We don’t get quite enough information to decide Kayleigh’s fate—

    —oh darn, that’s exactly like her role at Hexa. We’re placed in the same frustration the employees there have. The content moderators are given a Kafkaesque set of rules to follow. For instance, bodily harm is not allowed on the platform (unless for clearly comedic purposes), death and suicide are not allowed (but someone can leap from a window as long as you don’t see them hit the ground), you’re not allowed to hate protected groups, but you can phrase things to imply that terrorists are all Muslim because terrorists are not protected and being Muslim is not in itself an insult. You can’t threaten politicians but you can threaten public figures. At one point, the characters are forced to decide whether to leave a video up where a man is playing in bed with dead cats; the video doesn’t give definitive proof that they’re dead, but as content moderators they know that they had to take down footage of him killing them. You can see why these decisions get complex: their ever-changing 300 page rule book could use a flow chart.

    Having to navigate these rules leads to some detrimental effects on the employees. In one gruelling scene, the moderation team sees someone (in real life) on the roof across from their complex. They watch while he contemplates the fatal jump. Kayleigh reads the situation as an act of content moderation: “In videos of this sort of thing you usually didn’t see the ground, in which case we could leave them up, but this wasn’t a stunt or a joke or some activist making a statement. We would definitely see blood and maybe even bits of his insides, so this isn’t allowed, I remember thinking” (46-47). The fact that events in the world “are not allowed” hints at a disturbing ineptitude; in fact, only one member of the moderation team goes to help the distressed man while the others are rendered paralyzed witnessing this “content”. The most cynical of the group even calls out for the man to jump. Then, someone says, “We have to do something” (47) and “although people immediately started murmuring in agreement, no one did anything” (47).

    The callousness of the characters is replicated throughout the book. At a climactic moment in the text, several of the employees find themselves susceptible to flat Earth and Holocaust denial conspiracy theories. Perhaps it’s a sign of how jaded our society is and the normalization of horrific content that these revelations seem almost quaint. Another example is that as Kayleigh becomes more desensitized, she starts exploring increasingly disturbing pornography. An interesting side effect here is that Kayleigh is routinely masculinized throughout the text. At least once she is referred to as “a gentleman” and several times her masturbation is referred to as “jerking off”, which I generally would associate with men. I suspect her alignment with masculinity is a commentary on the link between men and sexual violence.

    Between all these moments, there seems to be an inherent love of transgression. When Hexa tells employees not to smoke, drink, or have sex on premises, those behaviours increase, Similarly, situations seem to escalate (cf. Kayleigh’s final excursion in the book), as though cultivated by content moderation. Being responsible for enforcing regulations only seems to increase the pleasure of their personal transgressions.

    While the book is infused with social commentary, a surprising amount of the novel is rooted in the relationship between Kayleigh and her girlfriend. Their work lives fade into the background somewhat and a domestic novel comes to the fore, offering its own doubts and concerns (especially given that Kayleigh alludes to being too affectionate in a previous workplace—does that remind us of the man with two split videos of the cats? Do we see the second video, as it were, of Kayleigh’s narration, while the previous, more obviously objectionable content has been censored out?).

    We Had To Remove This Post was, admittedly, not exactly what I expected. There were times I felt disappointed in how Bervoets delivered on the engaging premise it establishes. At the same time, though, I think this book could not have been written any other way to produce the same destabilizing effects. As much as we may thirst for disclosure, the quiet nuance of the novel allows us to maintain our humanity and allows us the space for the thoughtfulness such disturbing technological situations require.

    If this post is itself not taken down, I wish you some happy reading, however dark it may be.

The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth

    The prospect of writing a novel is unfathomable enough: writing a novel in verse, more so. Reading novels in verse can be similarly challenging—Derek Walcott’s Omeros, for example, is adorned so beautifully with poetic flare, though the central narrative is challenging to parse. A delightful surprise it is that Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate balances its commitment to the form with a neatly established story, by turns joyful and morose, that is inviting to readers of both fiction and poetry. 

    I ought to have suspected Seth’s flare for poetry after reading his epic 1400+ page novel A Suitable Boy, in which one family has a penchant for rhyming couplet witticisms and poetic banter. Even the table of contents is presented as a poem, a trope that found its usage at least 7 years earlier with The Golden Gate. Even the front matter of the text sparks joy.

    From there, the novel is told in a series of Onegin sonnets in lilting tetrameter that allows the chapters to be sung aloud, if one so wishes. It doesn’t quite have the same effect as the rhyming couplet iambic pentameter we may have come to expect from Shakespeare or Pope, but Seth smartly includes a poem justifying his love of the form that makes it hard to resist. My initial concern was that the novel would be so sing-songy that it would be hard to take seriously, but if you follow the lead of Seth’s punctuation, the book gives you the option to avoid the rhythm altogether and read the poems as more straightforward prose.

    When I think about how unfathomable it would be to write a novel in verse, my immediate follow-up questions are: what guides the story? How much of the story is planned? How much of the story spontaneously arises from following the rhyme? How many rhymes are planned in advance? Are certain names or words chosen for their rhymability? I just imagine an ever-shifting puzzle that is nothing if not an admirable feat (or feet, if you like poetry puns).

    The novel takes place in the 1980s and has several intersecting storylines, which I think works really well. We start with John, a priggish single man whose alternative sculptor and drummer friend Janet attempts to help him with his love life via personal ads in a newspaper. From there, Seth introduces a range of characters with their own entanglements—John and Liz form a relationship strained by a vindictive cat and disagreements over military weapon development (John works for the manufacturing plant); divorcee Paul finds himself with Ed, who struggles with religious guilt over homosexuality; Janet becomes somewhat embittered and her sculpting career gets awful critical reviews. The various intersections between them reach a satisfying conclusion, however bittersweet.

    The broad strokes of the story are clearly established and Seth lingers on some small moments, which gives the book the feeling of a classic epic alongside John Milton or even Homer (though my examples are not close at hand.) As a result, some seemingly insignificant moments (like a cat peeing on a pillow) are given multiple sonnets to breathe while the capital-B Big moments are glossed over. In turn, the story takes some unexpected turns, often for the better. Knowing the milieu of San Francisco in the 80s, for example, I fully expected the bi men to succumb to AIDS—thankfully Seth avoids such paths.

    There are so many risks for writing a novel in verse. With fewer words, either the plot or the characters run the risk of not being fully fleshed out, but Seth is economical enough for the characters to have distinct personalities. Let’s take a look, for instance at the introduction of Janet:

She is a sculptor. Stress and pleasure

For her thus perfectly combined,

The boundaries of toil and leisure

By definition ill-defined,

Her worktime doubles as her playtime,

But hand and eye deployed in daytime

Yield, when night comes, to ear and hand.

She is the drummer in a band

Well known and feared throughout the city:

The striking sounds of Liquid Sheep

Rouse distant suburbs from their sleep

Unlinked alike to tune or ditty,

Their music is a throttled yelp–

Morse crossed with a pig's squeal for help.

Although such accents supersonic

Engage her in the fevered night,

Janet considers it ironic

That her true forte, try as she might,

Her quiet forms of bronze and iron

[...] have not yet brought

The sober critical attention

She craves. The critics' common nose

Sniffs magisterially at her shows.

And as for divine intervention—

In Schiller's phrase, the very gods

Strive fruitlessly against such clods. (1.12-1.13)

Seth blends the objective facts and the more nuanced character traits beautifully. The opening sentence is direct and clear: “she is a sculptor”. The poems then expound on her disposition: “stress and pleasure / for her thus perfectly combined” points to a dichotomy in her craft, but also her personality. The blurred boundary between work and life captures her essence quite effectively, and further emerges in the introduction of her band—fun and artistic but also paying the bills. There’s also a clear identification of her goals and motivations, striving for critical attention.

    The other characters are similarly developed with Seth’s efficient craft. We catch John, for example, in a sort of quarter-life crisis:

 

Need John's life be so bug-infested?

He wasn't always so alone.

Entrepreneurial, double-breasted,

He's changed from what his friends have known.

Work, and the syndrome of possessions

Leave little time for life's digressions

At college, walking down the hall,

You'd meet your friends. But now it's all

Too complicated. . . . Scattered, sifted,

From New York City to L.A.,

They write, “We must meet up some day…”;

Yet even those who haven't drifted

–Like Phil, or Jan—too far from John,

He's chary to encroach upon (2.13)

 

Despite the bouncy rhythm of the poem, John’s situation is still able to retain its seriousness and encapsulates a common experience succinctly: John feels alone and unable to retain his connections.

While it doesn’t generally hinder the serious moments, the bouncy singsong can serve to elevate the humorous moments. There’s a sweet sincerity in John’s initial behaviours—his reluctance to personal ads, his rejection letters to interested women, and so on. 

Selection made, John now dispatches

Three crisp and courtly notes, and waits

Unhurriedly. The act detaches

His heart from gloom, leaves to the Fates

What lies within their proper region.

To each of the residual legion

He sends in a plain envelope

The photocopied lines: I hope

You will excuse this xeroxed letter.

I do not think that you and I

Are matched, but thanks for your reply

To my ad, and I wish you better

Luck for the future. John. He signs,

But adds no surname to the lines. (2.18)

There’s a levity in the style that makes this gesture all the more humorous to me. In those initial chapters, I felt compelled towards the characters. Seth has a knack for making characters endearing, especially upon their first introduction. There’s a generosity of spirit that comes through in his characters. What’s surprising is how in this novel the loving reaction I had for the characters initially grows to fade—I suppose like the characters’ loves of one another throughout the story. John initially seems awkward, harmless, and sympathetic. As time goes on, though, he becomes more judgmental, stubborn, and obstinate (not to mention homophobic), so my support for him really wanes and I find alliance with other characters.,

    Another element that’s hard not to admire is Seth’s learnèd, however cheeky, stance. Early in the novel, John goes on a series of dates to the theatre and offers some clever poetic criticism: “They see Macbeth /  Where John's bored to an inch of death / By her insistent exegesis: / Appearance and reality themes / And the significance of dreams / And darkness, and the singular thesis / That the Third Murderer is in fact / The central figure of each act” (2.19). It shows some clear angles for examining Macbeth and poses its own controversy on the controversy of a third murderer appearing out of nowhere. In one poem, he draws from Coleridge with the reference to a pleasure dome (“Kubla Khan”). Then he ‘kicks it old school’ with a Sir Thomas Wyatt reference. Incidentally, “Whoso list to hunt” has one of the most memorable lines of poetry that lingers in my brain since I first heard it: “in a net I seek to hold the wind”. Seth adds his own playfulness to the allusion at a classic music concert: “While the frenetic foursome tussle, / The embattled adults strive to keep / A zone of refuge in the bustle: / Charlemagne's curled up, half asleep. / On the piano, where Phil's sitting, / And Liz hums tunelessly while knitting. / Thus the young yahoos coexist / With whoso list to list to Liszt” (13.32). I adore that triple usage of the sound ‘list’. It’s also kind of clever that as the novel reaches its present day at the end, there seems to be an increased number of references to classical music and poetry. The past and present coincide, which is especially interesting since John is dwelling on the past months after the main events of the story.

    Seth’s affinity for the classics of poetry really shines in his more descriptive and explicitly poetic stanzas. He gets existential and grapples with love and death and meaning like the best. Here’s an example that knocked me out: “What, after all, is earth's creation? / A virus in the morgue of space. / What's Mozart but a weird vibration / Congenial to a brain-sick race / Rabid with virulence. Why bother / If things like these should maul each other / And, dying, yelp that they have won? / If clouds of dust occlude their sun / From them, it still shines undiminished / In its small galaxy. No change / Of note is likely when this strange / Irradiated beast has finished / Vomiting filth upon its bed / Of inhumanity, and is dead” (7.3). The craft and depth in those lines is spot on. “A virus in the morgue of space” is just a stunning metaphor and the language of disease that turns this poem into an extended metaphor recalls the so-called metaphysical poets like John Donne that T.S. Eliot so famously derided. But I find this sonnet irresistibly alluring, especially since it’s thematically connected to the threat of nuclear war that looms over the characters. The darkness of the poem is gutting, even more impressively so for its metrical commitment.

    But I don’t want to fall into that classic trap—since Aristotle, so many have—of elevating tragedy above comedy as being the source of truth and aesthetic pleasure. I’ll include two stanzas that appear in the wake of a character having children; I find incisively amusing in both form and content. [note: Renaissance sonnets often drew on metaphors of reproduction and progeny, aligning poetry with offspring, so these poems are even cheekier!]. Without further ado, some reflections about babies:

Why all this madness over babies?

—And how come even Mrs. Weiss,

Who spurned Liz as if she had rabies,

Agrees abruptly to be nice;

What's more, consents to come and visit!

Is it their helplessness? What is it?

These idiots with insistent ids

Who yowl when their unbridled bids

For love or milk go unregarded

For seven seconds—or who bawl

For no substantial cause at all—

Why are these egotists bombarded

With kisses, hugs, and smiles to spare?

Others, I think, deserve a share. (13.46)

How ugly babies are! How heedless

Of all else than their bulging selves—

Like sumo wrestlers, plush with needless

Kneadable flesh—like mutant elves,

Plump and vindictively nocturnal,

With lungs determined and infernal

(A pity that the blubbering blobs

Come unequipped with volume knobs),

And so intrinsically conservative,

A change of breast will make them squall

With no restraint or qualm at all.

Some think them cuddly, cute, and curvative.

Keep them, I say. Good luck to you;

No doubt you used to be one too. (13.47)

Really, I should just bold the phrases in here that make me laugh, but there are too many good lines. It’s a bold move to refer to babies, so universally belovèd, as “idiots with insistent ids,” and “vindictively nocturnal” is a glorious turn of phrase. It’s a nice touch to end these cynically humorous / humorously cynical anti-baby poems on the reminder that we, too, were once babies. 

    There’s a similar wittiness in Seth’s poems, often appearing in the final couplets of his sonnets. In one, John demonstrates some astute reflection:  “Relieved of the unspoken duty / Of cleverness and coolness now / John brings himself to speak, somehow / Of truth, ambition, status, beauty, / The hopes (or dupes) for which we strive, / The ghosts that keep the world alive” (2.47). I love that last couplet and their double inversions. Hopes and dupes are placed on the same footing in their ambiguity. Similarly, the idea of ghosts (the dead) keeping the world alive is a beautiful turn. Essentially, we’re left with a double-double couplet that has an optimistic tone, despite it all.

    To sum up this review so far: 1) the style is ambitious yet accessible, 2) the characters are well-established and, by-and-large, endearing, 3) the broad strokes of the plot intersect nicely and 4) there’s a pithiness to the poems that is entertaining and insightful.

    As a final note, I think The Golden Gate should be praised for its conscience. As silly as some things get (one woman takes a cat in a stroller to an anti-nuclear weapon protest), there is some clear social commentary undergirding the novel. For instance, the bi characters are represented with sincerity and tenderness and the religious argument against them is thoughtfully critiqued. In the vein of Leonard Choen and Hannah Arendt, Seth includes reflections on the banality of evil as it pertains to the weapons manufacturers:

Those who devise these weapons—decent,

Adjusted, family-minded folk—

Don’t think they plan death. Their most recent

Bomb (which, as an engaging joke,

They dubbed “the cookie cutter”) batters

Live cells and yet—this is what matters—

Leaves buildings and machines intact—

This butchering brainspawn is in fact

Soothingly styled a “radiation”

Enhancement device” by these same men.

Blind in their antiseptic den

To the obscene abomination

Of the refined ampoules of hate

Their ingenuity helps create, (7.6)

They go to work, attend a meeting,

Write an equation, have a beer,

Hail colleagues with a cheerful greeting.

Are conscientious, sane, sincere,

Rational, able, and fastidious.

Through hardened casings no invidious

Tapeworm of doubt, no guilt, no qualm

Pierces to sabotage their calm.

When something's technically attractive,

You follow the conception through,

That's all. What if you leave a slew

Of living dead, of radioactive

"Collateral damage" in its wake?

It's just a job, for heaven's sake. (7.7) 

 

Particularly in the second of the sonnets, I hear echoes of Leonard Cohen’s poem about Eichmann. Their list of qualities (conscientious, sane, sincere) takes on a sinister quality when you realize the destruction in their hands and the facility with which they complete their work; their tremendous power is distilled in writing an equation.

    Incidentally, I’m reading The Technological Society by Jaques Ellul and there’s a phrase in that text about technology that runs something lie the following: because it was possible, it became necessary. Otherwise put, “When something’s technically attractive, / You follow the conception through, / That’s all.” There’s an insistence on following the technology, whether the ethics are developed yet or not. Even though the novel is rooted in more human, interpersonal issues, the backdrop of a technological society is an engaging catalyst for conflict that allows for some ethical reflection.

    Overall, Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate is a fun, joyful read that offers insightful quips in a delightful rhythm. While there were elements I would have liked to see more of (like a culmination of the disarmament movement), there was plenty here to feel attached to. The book has a few faults, but each of them is overshadowed by the ambitiousness of its form. To tell a story in a lilting rhyme is hard, and to tell a good story this way is even more incredible.

    Happy reading, friends!

Brute: poems by Emily Skaja

    Emily Skaja’s poem “Dear Katie” begins with the following line: “Understand I need these fragments. To tell it once is not enough” (25). 

    The line reads as emblematic of Skaja’s book Brute: poems. Examining Skaja’s biographical entries reveals an academic background in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and that influence is clear in the telling of these poems. The poems orbit a number of related issues—domestic abuse, eating disorders, misogyny, sexual assault—and it is clear that “To tell it once” is not enough.

    The poems in the collection, in my view, were proficient and often had well-wrought motifs (at their best when speaking to one another), but the collection as a whole didn’t particularly excite my enthusiasm.

    That said, I want to focus on a few of the pieces I found most compelling. What is interesting to me in Skaja’s work is the way in which images and narrative are paired, giving the audience a taste of both. One can gather hints of connected stories between poems, most notably those involving relationships; several of the poems refer to an interchangeable ‘he’ that lets them read as a sustained exploration of the bond. These glimmers of narrative provide the audience a useful foothold for poems that can sometimes read more abstractly.

    My favourite example of a balanced poem are the opening stanzas of “Figure of Woman Coming Out of a Wall”:

& so it is, having slain the dragon Winter, I come to walk

the herringbone floorboards & the wet stairs of a nursing home

        out of the hall. Every day for a month I’ve said the words He left me.

At a wedding where I was happy for the couple, I declined to give the toast.

        I took his namecard from the table & told myself it wasn’t stealing—

That this name I loved belonged to me. At least.

         Through the window of the nursing home, I can see the gutter dripping.

I stand taller than the wingspan of a heron to suggest I’m an arrow. Which I point. (71)

I love these opening lines for their specificity of narrative. We’re provided a clear situation—or rather two—to help orient us for the more emotional exploration. The idea of stealing a name card from a table at a wedding is that precise kind of moment that is anchored in symbolism and so oddly resonant. It’s the kind of memory that lingers and is the perfect material for poetry. I also appreciate the imagery of its mirror image in the nursing home: “herringbone floorboards,” the “gutter dripping,” and the speaker standing “taller than the wingspan of a heron to suggest I’m an arrow.” Beginning the poem with such an interesting juxtaposition of scenes creates a resonant framework for the later two thirds of the poem. 

    “Figure of Woman Coming Out of a Wall” continues with the speaker visiting her senile grandmother, who “doesn’t always remember our name” (71) (I love how the ‘our’ unites them despite their clear disconnect). The grandmother’s reminiscences are replete with similarly specific moments that seem too real to be fiction, like “watching their father burn down the garage for the insurance money.” The mix-ups are gutting: “She thinks it’s my aunt’s birthday, that we have eaten golumpki / & set out the cake knife & we’re waiting for my grandpa, dead in 1987, // to rummage through the cabinets for the good floral plates.” Like other poems in the collection, this poem has some clever turns of phrase and imagery that capture the tone of the collection. In this case, she refers to how “March / has melted five blizzards down to floods” and how “There’s a parquet star on the floor. The moon is losing blood.” She continues, “When I cradle the skull of a vulture to my cheek, I remember / How once I was near-bride at the not-altar, how she sewed me a blue marriage quilt” (72).

    Individually, these images build a heart-wrenching scene and, taken on their own, are striking. Where the collection fails to land, for me, is that a lot of the poems seem to have a mix of metaphors that don’t evenly mesh with one another. The result is that the poems’ indistinct foci make them more difficult to latch onto. Rather than using metaphors to leverage one another, they are set up to battle for dominance.

    Of course, the broader sociological issues in Skaja’s poems are important and demand action. Skaja isn’t as abrasively polemical as some of her contemporaries, but the ethical impulse of the work is certainly clear. The poem “Girl Saints” stands out as a notable example in that respect. The poem almost certainly responds to the misogynistic undertones of religious discourse and the madonna / whore construction that so frequently traps women. “Girl Saints,” however, does not spend the majority of its time on brash deconstruction. Instead, there’s a surprising amount of rich metaphor and wordplay: “we were already stained in glass. // A circle of black flies biting / our arrival. Scales scraped off a fish. // Starved girls folded at a line from Leviticus” (23). A few lines later, Skaja writes, “Bring us the coat-check ticket for our eyes” (23) which I found such a mysterious and delightful phrase, anachronistic and decontextualized. The most explicit identification of the dilemma comes in just a few lines: “If ghost, if whore, if virgin – same origin story: // because X was a face too lovely, Y was a corpse in the lake” (23). I suspect the X and Y double as a wink to chromosomes, with the Y chromosome being the one that gets killed off in this framework.

    Let’s return to the poem which lent its opening lines to the start of this review since “To tell it once is not enough”. In “Dear Katie”, we see an elucidation of central key themes: there’s the religious “I have a hundred holy objects, everything looked upon, to break”, the temporal meditation “Time will pass, time will pass me, attaching mile-marker threats // to every causeway”, issues with mental health and eating disorders like “You are the only one who ever asks me Are you eating?” and the challenges of gendered expectations like in the line “when did I begin to choose this type of man who loves to ‘protect’ me // from himself?”. The fact that so many of these different motifs are placed into the same poem is perhaps representative of the internal competitions within poems—or, more generously, representative of the intersectional approach in Skaja’s work. The tangible lines of “Dear Katie” are then supplemented with the more oblique lines that are more evocative, but perhaps draw the focus somewhat: “Remember the dead dog as we found on the bridge road. A coyote, I said. / Raised as I was near a cemetery, I always assume some authority // over the departed. Stray magic. Lies about the natural world // comfort me, I admit. Like if a tree feels something / when another tree is fucking up her life. I believe in patterns. Shapes” (25). Personally, I prefer the more obscure lines, especially when taken from their context. The idea of “stray magic” in such close proximity to a reference to a dog is a clever layering, for instance.

    Cleanth Brooks, an unlikely critic to reference here, has a book called The Well Wrought Urn in which he talks about how poems are like well-wrought urns where everything cohesively fits together and that no piece of a poem can be changed without changing the whole. To me, Skaja’s poems may be well-wrought, but not in the same sense. In many cases, I think the base of each poem is well-constructed on a foundation of sociological critique and is then painted with its more lavish, if obscure, flourishes. It’s almost as if the stylized flourish could be lifted and the core of the poem would remain, for better or for worse.

    If you’re a fan of societal critique and social justice poetry, Skaja’s work nicely elevates the mode, even if it sometimes doesn’t quite hit the spot for me. Skaja cites her influences in the form of epigraphs before the different sections of the book, and the one that seems most clear to me is the reference to Sylvia Plath. Plath and Skaja are joined in a project of exploring deep issues, particularly as they pertain to feminine experiences of the world. This is an overly verbose way of saying: if you like Plath, read Skaja, too. 

    Thus concludes my first review in quite some time. Hope it was worth it!

    Happy reading!