Emily Skaja

‘’I am sewn into a dress. On Broad Street, ravens
Lurk on the Divine Lorraine Hotel.’’

A striking front cover depiction Gleipnir and Fenrir by Walton Ford is a telling dark introduction to this poetry collection by Emily Skaja, the winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.

A woman acquires multiple identities to overcome the pain of a broken relationship. She leaves the lover role behind and becomes a warrior and a witch, set to overcome violence, treason, show more expectations. She has to transform herself, to resist the vultures and the crows, the reminders of sexuality and death. Sleep paralysis, open wounds, cries and silence.

‘’Soldier for a lost cause, brute,
mute woman
written out of my own story, I’ve
been trying
to cast a searchlight over swamp-
woods & parasitic ash
back to my beginning, that
girlhood-
kite-wisp clouded by gun salutes
& blackbirds
tearing out from under the
hickories
all these fine August morning so
temporary
so gold-ringed by heat maze &
where is that witch-girl
unafraid of anything, flea-
spangled little yard rat, runt
of no litter, queen, girl who
wouldn’t let a boy hit her,
girl refusing to be It in tag,
pulling that fox hide
heavy around her like a flag? Let
me look at her
tell her on my honour, I will set
the wedding dress on fire
when I’m good & ready or she can
bury me in it.’’
‘’Brute Strength’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

This is the second of two books I picked up from the library where the poetry is themed around a single subject, in this case the break-up with and past relationship with a partner.

Reading Emily Skaja's poetry is something one should do with quiet concentration as she packs a lot of meaning into a stanza and even into a line. Her wording is sometimes riddle-like and hard to follow but after some time, I started to get the rhythm of her poetry. The following 1/4 of a poem is the first poem of show more the book and the title of the first section/chapter of poems:

MY HISTORY AS

In my history, I was bones eating paper
or I was paper eating bones. Semantics.

I lived in a narrow house;
I lived with a man who said

You fucked up your own life, who said
I could never love someone so heavy.

The place was brick on brick
with iron gates covering the windows --

rowhouse cage. South Philly. I was learning
how some of us are made to be carrion birds

& some of us are made to be circled.
Somewhere in this education

I stopped eating. Held up my hands
to see if my bones would glow in the dark.

```

I particularly like the lines, "I was learning
how some of us are made to be carrion birds

& some of us are made to be circled."

Emily Skaja is unrelenting in what sounds like well-deserved criticism of her now ex-partner. He seems to have been just a bit of an asshole.

I again found myself liking this book of poetry more than I would have expected given that it has a single theme, however, I deducted a star simply because it is so one-note and so unabashedly negative. Poem after poem was this way and after a while I needed some relief.

I don't, however, want to end on a negative note here myself. Emily Skaja's poetry is well-crafted and engaging and I liked many of her lines and individual poems in this book. A definite recommend. show less

True rating is 3.5 stars.

The first 3 quarters of this collection blew me away, incredibly imagery and word play. The last quarter or so felt very teeny-bopper, not nearly on the same level. Still, I recommend it!

Fabulous collection (with strong Plath influence)