In the vein of the twentieth-century confessional poets—Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Adrienne Rich—comes HALF AGONY, HALF HOPE, a collection that takes subjects including love, devotion, and expectation, tosses them into a blender, and hits Grind. What emerges is a group of poems whose simple structure—no meter, no rhyme, no extended imagery, no classical references (though she does attempt, beautifully, a pantoum, which is a Malay verse form of interwoven quatrains)—belies a wild, confused core. In her foreword, Wilkinson says that these poems are her “attempt at breaking her own cycle,” after which she describes herself with fascinating, unexpected phrases: “Addicted to limerence,” “Ship jumper,” and “Ticklish at the knees” are just a few examples. Most of the poems are short—one or two stanzas—though there are a few longer ones. The short ones are like gourmet chocolate: gone in a few seconds, but oh so delicious.
A few of the short poems need to be longer—not to fill some arbitrary word count, but because the poem feels incomplete. “Seasonal Spam,” a comparison of love to gimmicky seasonal food, is one of these. Wilkinson writes: “I was exciting to you in / the beginning, but I was / ultimately forgotten, left wasted / and unwanted on a shelf.” The reader feels similarly abandoned by this ending. Such dissatisfaction, however, is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to Wilkinson. Many of the poems begin with one startling sentence and unfold from there, as in “Head to Toe,” whose first line is “Today, I dressed for my own funeral.” Wilkinson is also fond of wordplay, as in “Freedom”: “I’m free. / I am—free, / but I’m like the / Statute of Liberty— / I still carry a torch.” (Notice the rhyme at the ends of lines 1, 2, and 4, followed by no rhyme in line 5. There isn’t a lot of formal poetry in this volume, but when there is, it is clever and enjoyable.)
With confessional poetry, it is often the case that a little goes a long way. Perhaps that is why the genre is not as popular as it once was. Yet when it works, it really works. HALF AGONY, HALF HOPE really works. Some readers will be inspired; others may be depressed. One thing is certain, though: no one will toss this book aside without a second thought.
Full of feeling and enamored with wordplay, Hannah Wilkinson’s poems in HALF AGONY, HALF HOPE are sure to make an impact on every reader.
~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader