The O, Word? Sealey Challenge | Week 2
Reviewing Chakraborty, Iver, Duong, Adesina, Nguyen, Wani, & Drake
Helllllloooooo, poets of the internet! We are down with week 2 of the Sealey Challenge and going strong! No need to keep you in suspense — let’s get to this week’s reads!
See Week 1’s post for a guide to the ★ system
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ — Personal fave!
★ ★ ★ ★ — Terrific!
★ ★ ★ — Pretty good!
★ ★ — Likely disappointed me.
★ — I cannot, in good faith, recommend this book.
1) Arrow by Sumita Chakraborty
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: Playlist
Worlds such as this were not thought possible to exist./ My lord, I am a mile beyond the honeyed moon.
- pg. 10, "Marigolds"
Arrow is a collection that reads like a modern epic, with Chakraborty's scholastic background evident in her wealth of references and muses. The first sections of the collection are comprised of long poems, the construction of their syntax a constellation of rhetorical moves working together to sustain the lyricism of the verse. Throughout the collection, images of celestial bodies & beings orbit, pointing us in the direction of mysteries we can only hope to uncover. There is a sense that something beyond language is being accessed.
Rating: ★★★½ | Chakraborty’s lyricism is undeniable; Transparently, I sometimes struggle with the longer pieces, and overall found it difficult at times to access the book’s density
2) Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco by K. Iver
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: Speaker’s Journey
There's a noon rain to get caught in and many/ clavicles to behold. I wish you could see this one,/ tilting across a century.
- pg. 62, "Because You Can't,"
As I read this book, Del Water Gaps "Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat" played on repeat in my mind. The collection is a montage of grief & tenderness: bloodless bones and a Bronco, the night sky and fields of want. The poems remind us that the afterlife of loss is a new world to stumble through, a litany of futures to imagine & hold, to mourn & rebuild. We begin with an origin story, all of us aching to rebel. Everything after that is the search for the hand that reminds you what living is for. All we can do for the few scenes we've got left.
Rating: ★★★★ | Reading this collection softened me the way being a witness to love only can, the way seeing someone fade before their time breaks you
3) At the End of the World There Is a Pond by Steven Duong
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: Memoir
Betta fish are a motif./ Like them, the mother & son are born/ to break each other.
- pg 9, "Novel"
Duong's debut feels spiritually connected to Franny Choi's The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On in the sense that it looks at our many endings and asks what comes next. This life is full of violences and yet we keep pushing through. I enjoyed the "Novel" series of sonnets, as well as Duong's consistently humorous voice. The natural world offers a wealth of images that Duong makes great use of, & there are some novel cultural touchpoints, such as his inclusion of "Tumblr blue"
Rating: ★★★½ | Kept going back & forth between this, but ultimately I don’t think the poems stuck with me enough to bump it to 4 ★. Still a good collection, would recommend reading
4) Death Does Not End at the Sea by Gbenga Adesina
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: Speaker’s Journey
Death is not silence./ It is where I hear you most clearly.
- pg 5, "I Carried my Father Across the Sea"
Adesina's debut is a book of prayers & promises. Promises between sons & fathers. Prayers for our living & for our dead. Prayers for the vast seas connecting us in all our lifetimes. In this collection, the speaker stands on both sides of fatherhood, trying to show his son a world that no longer holds his own. We track Baldwin across cities, followed closely by the son's curiosity & the speaker's paternal tenderness. In this collection, death is a door we come to, but it is not the end of the story. It's the start to a new one altogether.
Rating: ★★★★★ | Was drawn to the speaker’s balance between elegy & reflection, overall a very touching collection
5) Dear Diaspora by Susan Nguyen
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: Speaker’s Journey
My tongue, glowing pink . Shivering like a lure.
- pg 2, "The Body as a Series of Questions"
Dear Diaspora is a collection that feels equal parts memoir & witness. Through the collection's main subject, we uncover a layered world of diasporic experience, conscious of both family history & what can't be shared. Interspersing the personal narrative are glimpses of a larger cultural context; histories echo forward through time, grounding the speaker's grief and gratitude.
Rating: ★★★★ | Naturally has some Diaspora™ poetry, but mostly feels very grounded in the personal
6) Lantern by Sanna Wani
Genre: Poetry (Sophomore)
Archetype: Memoir
Abundance is a sign of good health. Like this tree, I am not interested in poetry that does not help me live.
- pg 10, "A Happy Poet"
Wani's second collection, as the title suggests, is so full of light. Split into five sections — CRAFT, LOVE, ETHOS, FAITH, & GRIEF — the poems read like meditations, musing on the forces that propel us through our daily lives. There is a Mary Oliver-esque quality to the work, which grounds itself in moments we can all resonate with: the peculiarities of our loves, the ways we grow infatuated with our cities. ∴ Poetry is a sense of grace, Wani writes in "Proof." Even in the midst of pain or grief, poetry reminds us of beauty. This collection shines like a lamp post guiding us back to our center.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Collection I left feeling warm, great follow-up to Wani’s debut
7) The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket by Kinsale Drake
Genre: Poetry (Debut)
Archetype: Playlist
When I was brought into the world,/ I looked back.
- pg 58, "Song for the black cat outside my mother's apartment”
Drake's debut demonstrates a keen ear for the music of the line. The poems of the collection paint for us a landscape of Native-American life made up of dreams & stories & community. Where do songs go when it is dark? the speaker asks in the absence of proper acknowledgement of the lives that tended this land prior to displacement, who knew its music & horses before we ever touched this shore. Every day, we are living lives our ancestors could not begin to fathom. This collection is a start to putting it to paper.
Rating: ★★★★ | Fan of Drake’s lyricism & music, and of course the apostrophic “O”
Thanks for reading — see you next week!