Review of Sleeping Things by Holly Iglesias (Clara B. Jones)

Sleeping Things

Holly Iglesias

2018

Press53

$14.95

83 pp

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones*

Holly Iglesias is a prose poet, a critic, a translator (Spanish), an educator specializing in documentary and archival poetry, a feminist, a lesbian, a traveler, a recipient of fellowships and awards, as well as, a member of the Cuban diaspora in the United States. As her poems attest, she has a strong sense of memory and place, in addition to, an abiding concern for the status and welfare of children and women. Sleeping Things (2018), her third full-length collection, includes poems highlighting her thesis, advanced in her critical essay, Boxing Inside The Box (Quale Press, 2004), that the prose poem, a form of ancient origin, symbolizes the constraints borne by women [all oppressed groups?] boxed into bedrooms, kitchens, churches, bodies—literally, figuratively, and psychologically: “Oh, victim soul, don't bite back. Instead, sink deeper/and deeper into the bed, into sheets thin as pity, pillows/flattened by the weight of piety.” (p 18, Sleeping Things); “Mother is the superior of our kitchen, her habit an/ apron.” (p 20). I first met Iglesias after a reading in a bar, Crow & Quill, in Asheville, NC (p 69), filled with a group of her dedicated admirers, with whom I soon identified. In past, I have reviewed a few of the author's books and am pleased to have the opportunity to do so again.

Sleeping Things, a volume in three parts, is titled and introduced by Federico García Lorca's words, a poet referenced elsewhere in Iglesias' writings. Clearly, she has been influenced by Lorca's Surrealism (“automatism,” unconscious processes: “ A Child's Book of Knowledge...”, pp 14-15, 21; “Remote Control”, p. 26) and his “deep song” form (“The body sojourns but briefly in the material world...”, p 4; “The grandeur of possibilities soothed/my shame. Should I stand shoeless for days in Alpine/snow...?”, p 24). Part I of Iglesias' new, handsomely crafted and illustrated, book, presents poems with multiple layers of significance, demonstrating the ways in which her childhood experiences, musings, and recollections relate to historical and current events documenting the author's routes to an awakening of socio-political consciousness: “We were a system, a sociology, a discipline of black/and white, its strictures softened by Gregorian chant/and myrrh, by the nuns pacing left and right [sic] as they/tapped the maps with a flourish—Holy Roman Empire,/Barbarian Invasions, Counter-Reformation.” (p 7). The poet's vivid historical, psychological, spiritual, and metaphorical tapestries reveal her ongoing interest in causal, situational, interconnected, as well as, multi-level memory, time, place, relationships, and identity inherent to personal, local, regional, national, and international domains (see, for example, “Hit Parade”, p 27).

Part II of Sleeping Things reprints poems from her chapbook, Fruta Bomba [tr. Papaya or female genitalia; Making Her Mark Press, 2015]. Although, Iglesias may be viewed as a “political” writer, these poems, like others throughout the book, demonstrate her lyrical, intimate style transcending sociology, literalness, and didacticism: “No words precede the reef, none follow. Only sea fans,/brain coral, clouds above the surface. Glint of sun, of/barracuda and baitfish in flight, the Gulf Stream/sweeping by, squeezing between Florida and Cuba....” (p 31). Iglesias often refers to events in Cuba, Miami, and St. Louis, especially, the physical and emotional distances between these places, as well as, other locations. Her poems about tropical areas authentically reflect their sensuousness—color- passion-soul (components of Lorca's duende), exoticism, mystery, and, sometimes, the potential for violence (“The boy, crying, clutches the neck of his rescuer as a/federal agent in riot gear yanks him away.” (p 44). Though Iglesias has clearly renounced the [optimistic] Modernism characteristic of José Martí and Lorca, the poems in Sleeping Things are not depressing or nihilistic. They reflect, rather, an awareness of the complexities and contradictions of the post-World War II political landscape, refusing to advance unifying solutions, as the Modernists did (e.g., Science, Psychoanalysis, Communism). Nonetheless, each section of this book demonstrates that Iglesias' compositions are part of the experimental tradition, particularly, in their forms (e.g., pp 14-15, 17, 21, 42, 45, 56).

Part III is, in my opinion, the strongest section of the book, in part, because it highlights Iglesias' strengths with words—double-meanings, word-parings, complete sentences, as well as, whole poems. Many titles, for example, are playful conceits (e.g., “Lobal Warfare,” “Uncivil War...,” “The Game of Crones”). Also, my favorite line in the volume occurs in Part III (p 60): “It was still life [sic] after she'd gone—hair in the brush,/scented talc, the impress [sic] of her younger self in the/cushions of the couch.” Further, the most lyrical, metaphorical, and imagistic poems can be found in this part: “The first time I saw the Mississippi from the air,/I knew my place, and I knew that home was a sinuous/ribbon lacing east to west, past to future, bondage to/possibility, appearing and disappearing like a snake in/new-mown hay as the sun flashed on its surface.” (p 51). In my experience, music and meter, Formalist criteria, do not often characterize contemporary prose poems; yet, Iglesias achieves these heights over and over again. Sleeping Things contains some of the most beautiful prose poems I have ever read.

Reflecting upon Iglesias' body of work leads me to recall Louise Bogan's line: “Women have no wilderness in them; they are provident, instead.” I wonder whether Bogan and Iglesias, are underestimating women and other oppressed or suppressed groups—their capacities for change, transformation, as well as, agency? Having said that, I think the reader will agree that many of the compositions in Sleeping Things are noteworthy, deserving a wide audience. Among feminist poets writing today, Holly Iglesias is one of my favorites, and, if her canon were larger, she would certainly deserve critical attention relative to Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, and Elizabeth Bishop. Iglesias' compositions are mature examples of the prose poem sub-genre, and, at their best, the writings stun in their ability to combine “color” with theme (additional Formalist criteria). I have learned a lot about style and metaphor from studying Iglesias' project, and I am always left hungry for more after reading her books. Absorbing Sleeping Things was a pleasure to experience, and I highly recommend this significant collection to anyone interested in compelling innovative literature.

*Published in PANK Magazine Blog, January 2019, online

Review of Fruta Bomba: Poems by Holly Iglesias (Clara B. Jones)

Fruta Bomba: Poems

Holly Iglesias

higlesia@unca.edu

Making Her Mark Press

(self-published)

Asheville, NC

2015

$6.00

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones*

Holly Iglesias, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, is an accomplished poet and translator (Spanish). She has published several chapbooks and books, and her writing has appeared in Prarie Schooner, Barrow Street, Crab Orchard Review, Massachusetts Review, as well as other venues. The poet has been awarded fellowships from a number of sources, including, the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, and her first book, Souvenirs of a Shrunken World, won the First Book Award from Kore Press in 2008. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a reading by Iglesias, and it was apparent that I was in the presence of a socially-conscious poet whose creative work transcends politics, sociology, and journalism. The lyricism that she achieves is reminiscent of the “deep song” form associated with Federico Garcia Lorca, a poet whose verse introduces Fruta Bomba [tr. papaya or female genitalia].

Fruta Bomba, a revised edition of a 2012 chapbook published by Q Avenue Press, is a historical as well as an artistic document. Each contribution is a prose poem, some exhibiting experimental forms and many in the tradition of Lorca's surrealism, emphasizing events in Cuba and Miami, as well as physical and emotional distances between these two locations. Iglesias' poems of place, time, and space authentically reflect tropical sensuousness—the colors, the passion and soul (Lorca's duende), the exoticism, the mystery, and the potential for violence. Fruta Bomba is not a didactic work; however, it is clearly influenced by historical figures and highlights, in particular, Cuba's liberation from Spain and the death of José Martí; the Spanish Civil War and the death of Lorca; Janet Reno's advocacy of children's rights, particularly, the Elián González case; and, the Cold War. Though Iglesias has clearly renounced the [optimistic] Modernism characteristic of Martí and Lorca, the poems in this chapbook are not depressing or nihilistic. They reflect, rather, an awareness of the complexities and contradictions of the post-World War II political landscape—at personal and social scales.

The poet and editor, Eleanor Wilner, has praised Iglesias' “pitch-perfect ear and keen eye for the voices, vantages, and scraps of the actual”, and most of the poems in the present collection are noteworthy for their metric and imagistic qualities, notwithstanding their prose form. Iglesias' formal skills are, also, evident in her placement of poems relative to one another, and song-like poems stringing words together [“list poems”] serve almost as “white space”, providing relief from difficult, sometimes, disturbing, verses. Even the “Glossary” and “Notes” at the end of the chapbook mimic poems, the former elucidating contrasting effects of the same word, and “Notes” reminding us of the historical and legal backgrounds of the poems.

Several poems (e.g., “Talking Without Italics”; “Llorona”) address change, difference, and the disruption of calm, and “Bicentenario” echoes an earlier epigram in which Martí tells us that he has two fatherlands—Cuba and nighttime. In this poem, babies are excited to see a garbage truck in the morning, but the speaker, apparently, a woman, visits a doctor, physically and mentally ill (“Doctor, my eyes my ears the tremor the buckling walls Big truck!”). Continuing a recurrent theme, the welfare of babies and children, the poem, “Anthem”, expresses concern for children's safety and the preservation of innocence (“teach my children well feed them on my dreams”). In other poems, the vulnerability of children contrasts with the vulnerability of adults bearing the consequences of political unrest and war (“Assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience”) and the instability of reality when things are not what they appear to be (“The goat, a bee, six nuns by the sea.”; “The concept of Miami was correct but got out of hand.”). Other poems represent the tropics as an ethereal experience (“Another afternoon cloudburst and what to do but wait.”; “the same easy pleasure his finger takes when circling the headlight of a Lamborghini as though it were capable of arousal”). Iglesias' work clearly derives from serious consideration of and direct experience with her themes, and the poems resonate with Post-structuralist tones since interpretation is yielded to the reader.

Fruta Bomba offers its audience many pleasures and discoveries and is an excellent example of the high quality of writing to be found in chapbook format. Iglesias' prose, including, experimental, poems do not appear to be contrived but seem to be almost classical conventions appropriate to theme, meaning, and meter. A good example is the poem, “Oremos”, that begins with a religious litany and moves, sensitively and logically, to a statement about inequality and oppression. But, Iglesias cannot be dismissed as a polemical poet. Her craft is always primary. She is not telling her reader what to think or do. This chapbook presents the work of a mature poet who deserves a wider audience and is one of the most compelling collections that I have read in some time. Fruta Bomba is a major achievement recommended to all who love literature, and I look forward to reading Iglesias' future publications.

*Originally published in Rhizomatic Ideas, ~2015