Messy Existence
2020; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/abr.2020.0103
ISSN2153-4578
Autores ResumoMessy Existence Mark Magoon (bio) Waste Emily Toder BlazeVox Books www.blazevox.org/index.php/Shop/ 106 Pages; Print, $16.00 Emily Toder writes meditations for the now — stripped-down poems filled with deep, controlled breaths that are steeped with mindful focus. She exercises her readers, has them reflect — has them do something akin to self-actualization (something far different than self-realization) — and asks them to ponder one simple, necessary question: what does our trash tell us about ourselves? Like meditation, Toder’s poems achieve a sense of calm, but only after the difficult process of examining personal conscience and experience. Clarity comes in time, at a price, and after a whole lot of work: after practice and breath and breath and breath. Toder’s work is angry and sarcastic, yes, but it’s also filled with philosophical repetition—its liberating rewards are damn near spiritual. Waste is Toder’s third full-length release and in it she deftly wades through the emotional wreckage and refuse that life often throws at folks far too fast for them to catch. Toder reflects on the moments before and after (sometimes years after) we’ve wasted hours, wasted relationships, and wasted who knows how many words without understanding or appreciating whatever it was we had in the first place. She examines each bit — moving back and forth from sizes micro and macro — in order to show the great gaping hole in our whole: Waste is not revocableand not finalizedit’s infinite For Toder, waste is given up, tossed aside; it is inaction or improper action, and — more than anything — it’s easy and everyone is guilty of it. The endgame of her exercise? After the longing, anger, and despair of her collection fades, there’s reflection, of course, but after that comes a rush of something unique and real — a methodical, necessary growth — a renewed sense of self-honesty, which we all need (maybe now more than ever). Toder knows that there’s something to be gained from life’s garbage. Her mindfulness to this truth, her obsession to revisit and document each wasted detail is what’s most striking about her poems — and readers will inevitably find many fragmented parts of themselves in her work: a flamed-out love, a chance to move away, many somethings left un-said. Her self-examination will undoubtedly lead others to meditate in a similar fashion. In fact, this collection calls for the mind to wander in a metaphysical way. Toder marries the material on the page along with common occurrences — moments of longing, lacking, utterances, and misgivings — and her meditative poems let the reader reach back, remember, and make peace with the ways that they, too, share in her concept of waste: Even forgotten partiesare not wastes Any party your soul came towas not a wasteEven expensive partiesyou threw in debt Even parties you mademistakes at are worthwhile Many of Toder’s poems are lyrical and — like memories — sometimes jarringly one-sided and sparse. Her images are straightforward and her tone exact, and at times, it is almost teetering along the edge of cold. She grounds herself in the very real concreteness of messy existence, so there’s no need for any over the top abstraction. Toder even chooses to opt out of titles — continually pushing, piling on the overwhelming bury of waste from one poem to the next and reminding us of the similarity and what it means to navigate waste’s constant building. Instead, she decides to start with a simple squared symbol used to organize. The pile-on is itself the purpose, so is the connectivity: more and more waste. In her poem that begins with the first line “Memory lane is hideous” Toder writes: Memory lane is no jokeMemory is actually a real footpathin the space-time no one can feel The metaphor of the laneis a nice try but the pastis actually happening Life, friends, is not boring. Life might be fortuitous — happening by accident and chance — certainly it can be quite terrible, but it’s never boring in the sense that we think of that word...
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