There is still whole here: a review of Sarah Sousa’s Hex
What is broken might still be unbroken.
Dear hopeful reader,
Years ago, when I was establishing myself as a writer and editor, I also reviewed books and posted them on Amazon and my now deleted personal site. My most enjoyable and memorable reviewing experience was of Cancer Vixen and Ann Tenna, two gorgeous, hilarious, and moving graphic novels by the great author and cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto. She was so gracious and lovely in gifting me physical copies of the books. I still behold them fondly and hold them in my heart.
When I became more entwined with the online literary community, I wrote a few reviews as well as blurbs for others’ chapbooks. My last review, however, dates back to 2021. As much as I love reviewing poetry chapbooks, it takes up time and thought. Poetry isn’t as straightforward as prose and requires introspection and analysis. As much as I love writing and reading poems, I must admit I don’t always understand what I read, or at least not from the first reading.
But, I love getting lost in beautiful, breathtaking words and worlds. I’m especially fond of chapbooks in which each poem stands on its own while being closely connected to the next and the one before. I think of Sarah Ann Winn’s exquisite work, especially Haunting the Last House On Holland Island, Fallen Into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016), being meticulously joined in narrative like that.
In January 2021, I had the honor and pleasure of reviewing Hex by Sarah Sousa for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Of all the reviews I’ve ever written, I’m most proud of this one, by reason of it being analytical and, to some extent, reflective of our current world state.
Rereading it again I feel fervor to analyze poetry once more. I also realized I changed my perspective on some of my thoughts regarding our society. This realization is an acknowledgment that we as humans are continuously changing and evolving; what we thought two years ago may be different today. How wonderful! I kept the review as is, and I hope I still did the superb book justice.
There is still whole here: a review of Sarah Sousa’s Hex
In Hex, Sarah Sousa writes in “Fount of Tears,” “I fell from the sky / everywhere and all at once. / I wept a pestilence.”—something so ominous, horrifying, and unimaginable yet also rather familiar, relatable, and cyclical—it has happened before and may happen again; be warned. Although “Fount of Tears” is not the first poem in Sousa’s dystopian chapbook, it can set precedent for the world whose environment has fallen, burned, and collapsed and can also be read first, or even last. In fact, each poem, a dismal glimpse into the barren and unpromising aftermath, can be read in any order as standalone entity while all together the pieces restore a complete and cohesive narrative of a shared disorder. The readers may feel as if they have the privilege and freedom to choose how they can approach Hex, how they can interpret it, how the story can end, perhaps even continue, for them.
Besides the collapsed and seemingly uncultivable environment in Hex, there are other outside and internal forces that shape and make or even break that environment and its despairing and desperate inhabitants: scarce raw materials for scavenging, growing, and harvesting yields; Mother, the human but also divine matriarch of the post-apocalyptic society, who can give or take away in a blink of an eye; human hubris and frailty that impact what can be given and taken away collectively as well as individually; and, of course, nature itself that either walks away or brings forth more austerity independent of Mother.
The lines from “Garden Canticle” brilliantly encapsulate these aforementioned challenges: “This is the life where I learn / even water must be earned if we’re to reclaim the garden.” In this second chance at life, it’s not enough to just build a fishing boat, set to sea, catch that fish; the resources are limited—albeit there’s also creativity in that (because of this limitation, people find other ways of making use of these resources)—and can easily break. A sensible rule of thumb is imparted in “Loading the Boat:” “If the wind has the scream of wolves or women / in it, carry less than the capacity of your boat.”
It’s terrifying to imagine living like this, worrying transportation or housing may turn to ruins tomorrow after a windstorm, rationing food as the only soil that yields may become infertile next season. Even nature and its creatures may desert the inhabitants as is implied in “Winter Solitaire:” “She imagines this season abandoned / the way the many-pointed stags / have abandoned her”. Those of us who live comfortably are fortunate we aren’t in this situation. Even during this collectively endangering and exhausting pandemic and yearly hurricanes and wildfires or other natural disasters, we have safe shelter or insurance to find another home, we have vocational security or can get unemployment or disability benefits, privileges we oftentimes take for granted, privileges that make us ignore the living conditions of those who are less advantaged than us socially and economically, even more so now, in health and wealth. We the lucky don’t think about lack of resources, nature turning its back on us, some entity regulating our earth and our lives, we the lucky can weather these tumultuous times, while others can barely get by or had unfortunately already perished. That’s a terrifying inequity that still exists today in our society that appears to be free and equal on the surface level.
As terrifying—if not more—is Mother, a divine, almighty essence or powerful, imposing human, perhaps even personification of nature—whichever way the readers wish to construe her—who seems threatening and punishing as is chillingly palpable in “Mother Most Hollow:” “We thought our brains wiser than our bodies, / our bodies cleverer than Mother. So, / one by one, Mother took the food away.” But is she truly merciless, or has she given enough chances that now one must tread lighter and weigh every decision? In the same poem, the preceding lines read, “We shunned the sweetest of mother’s / fruits as too sweet” serving as indication of Mother Earth’s bountiful, giving fruitfulness with a tinge of rot as we come to know later on she takes it all away. Mother, whether she’s corporeal, spiritual, or personified, acts as warning of a more crumbling, if not crumbled, world. Her ominous omnipresence and omnipotence urge the readers to reflect on their shortcomings as humans and humanitarians, as well as on the fragility and ephemerality of life, and how every day they can make a choice to add to its prolongation or further take from it. Mother bestows just enough for the people in the world of Hex to—hopefully—appreciate and value what they have now, what they can make use of, what they can change over time. She keeps the sun as an essential everyday promise, she even grants the poetic magic and mayhem of the moon, as is lyrically painted in the titular poem with the lines “Mother conceives the sun in the dark hours / before morning, grows large, and births the sun / at dawn.” and “the moon, that which the old farmers called / a waxing and waning poem, the moon is vexed / and swells monstrous.”
There’s certain fairy-tale hopefulness and enchantment in both these symbols, a compelling impetus to go on, unravel the collapsed present, and rebuild an enduring future. Nothing is forever, everything is elusive; therefore, all things and beings have the potential to transcend and transform. Such heartening notion is best reflected in “Charm for Making Net:” “The earth is an island / which once was a mountain. The earth is a sea which once held a lake.” A mountain can grow into an island and then revert back as a mountain again to be later transformed into an island, again—how freeing, comforting, and fortifying!
As the world is collapsed—and collapsing further if not for a radical transformation—in Sousa’s Hex so is our world burning and changing during our own natural cataclysms, global pandemic, and civil revolution. There’s a lot of relevant and foreshadowing parallel to be found and deliberated upon in this striking, nuanced, and penetrative chapbook, considering what we’re undergoing communally and may even have to face in the future where our lack of humility, empathy, and forethought are concerned. As “The Other World” says, “What is broken here / there is whole.” As bleak as the future of the world in Hex may be, as uncertain as the future of our own world, there is still a possible whole. What is broken might still be unbroken.
About Hex by Sarah Sousa
Winner of the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. In a neo dark age brought about by environmental collapse, Hex imagines what might arrive to fill the void. Dystopian fairytale, a merciless mother God, apocalyptic myth and late world charms and scrying combine to create a terrifying reality.
About Hex, judge Chloe Honum writes: “With strikingly sensory language and lyric intelligence, these poems carve deep paths of grief, tenderness, and dire warning.”
Poet and novelist Jennifer Givhan writes: “Hex casts with the power of both protective amulet and curse, ligatures oral folktale, tight lyricism, and the wild spirit of epic poetry.”
You can purchase Hex for $12.00 on Sarah Sousa’s website.
Is there a poetry chapbook you think I should review next, should I choose to do that any time soon? What is your most beloved poetry chapbook?
Yours hopefully,
Nadia
Of course, I absolutely love this.—“What is broken here / there is whole.” As bleak as the future of the world in Hex may be, as uncertain as the future of our own world, there is still a possible whole. What is broken might still be unbroken.” What a thorough and thought-provoking review!
I’m most appreciative of the introduction to Sarah Sousa, what a poet. I’m always so impressed when people manage to (seemingly) effortless condense the magical and enchanted alongside the stark and apocalyptic. Thank you, Nadia. I love getting lost in your beautiful, breathtaking words and worlds 💗