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
