INDISCERNIBLE ELEMENTS: CALCIUM

Newville presents an experimental book of poetry about death and regeneration.

This collection’s poems circle themes of mortality, disintegration, and resurrection. The book begins with just a sentence or two per page. The pages then turn black and the text becomes handwritten. As the handwriting deteriorates, clear lines and stanzas are abandoned, with words scattered, crossed out, and oriented upside down on the page. Black-and-white photographs, graphics, digital collages, and drawings are interspersed with the poems, which tend toward the dark side. One speaker shares that, while she “once was dancing amongst sea shells,” she is now “trapped in walls of depression” and laments that “Living is / dying.” There are vague mentions of a mother, who is “in a state of / mourning / agony / sickness.” Toward the end of the book, the poet switches to an essay format, connecting a memory of her uncle’s sudden death in a car accident with her calcium fascination and her participation in a post-graduate architecture program. She recalls a school assignment in which she was tasked with telling a story of a bird; she chose crows because she learned that they have funerals for their dead. This leads into a meandering discussion about recompose (also known as human composting), creativity, grief, and Covid-19. She concludes: “i have been able to change, adapt, and turn into a new light just like every organism on Earth.” There is little grounding for the reader in this poetry collection—it is often unclear where one poem ends and another begins, who the speaker is, or what subjects these poems refer to. Lines like “I have fought for you / since birth” offer no context. Most of the poems are handwritten, and many are illegible. Occasionally, the poet crafts an intriguing image, like, “Water morphs me into life / I crystalize / an organic weapon,”but too often there’s too little substance for the reader to grasp.

A sparse collection of poetry that leaves the reader guessing.