WHAT WE HOLD NO LONGER

Gedaliah’s wide-ranging poetry collection provides a step-by-step consideration of growing older in an increasingly unfamiliar world.

Gedaliah muses on the aging process in his latest book of poems, which comprises five sections—“Transformations,” “The Thing” (“Das Ding”), “Dying in the Belly of the Beast,” “What We Hold No Longer,” and “The Invisible River”—all of which aim to tackle the effects of aging, memory, identity, and time on the individual. Each section begins with quotes from various sources in different fields of study, from author Peter Beagle and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard to psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and Cuban poet José Marti. While there are the occasional lighthearted poems (“I want to change myself! / I sincerely do! / So why are you looking at me / in that funny way?” in “Changing Myself”), Gedaliah is typically more serious. He sporadically assumes different personas, such as the famously exiled Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the poem “Anaxagoras Speaks.” Other real-world inspirations include poet Walt Whitman, whose famous line, “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world” from Song of Myself (1855) is echoed in Gedaliah’s “First Cry”: “Suffering slowly teachers / the cost of Being. The price paid / for wonderous gifts: / the unbearable awe / and manifold beauty. / And one day I will rise-up / to greet them with / a barbaric yawp!” Certain poems are more prose-like than others, such as “Epiphany” (“I’m building a master’s thesis, studying / the nature of breathlessness in AIDS / Forcing myself to read one more paper, / before sleep becomes insistent”).

The collection essentially walks readers along the various stages of life; each section loosely meanders through time, mimicking the effects of coming-of-age in a way that may remind readers of subjects explored by William Blake. From wide-eyed innocence (“I am an immigrant standing / at the river’s edge. / Dazed in twilight before / a vast new world,” in “Hope”) to hardened experience (“The sum of experience cries-out: / I want no more of this! / Yet, I have no appetite for death,” in “Disquiet”), the narrators take readers through a journey that extends through years, joys, and hardships. And while the passage of time isn’t exactly a new or revelatory topic for poetry, Gedaliah approaches it in a way that feels fresh—and not just because of modern references to the social media generation (“prep, pose, picture, gaze repeat…Now, I only see an anguished child, oppressed / by a voice inside that taunts her: / Less-than! Less-than! Less-than! Less-than!”). The freshness also comes from highlighting the duality of aging and memory, of being present while also looking backward, perhaps most clearly encapsulated in the book’s titular section. In “New Year’s Day,” for example, the narrator notices a young girl being held (despite being “too old to be carried far”) and notes that in the not-so-distant future, “innocence crumbles beneath / tumultuous years of adolescence.” In that moment, the narrator is both the child and the adult looking at the child. These musings ultimately make for a layered experience that rewards rereading.

A well-considered collection full of wistful imagery.