SURVIVING IMMORTALITY AGAIN

A poetry collection about society’s underbelly.

Holstad explores themes of addiction, lust, and death in this unflinching look at life on the margins. In early poems, readers meet characters like “Carlos,” a “lifetime 18th Street / banger” with a “permanent / limp and a wicked grin.” “Horse” captures the detachment of a fatal overdose, while “The Creatives” recounts the suicide methods of various artists. “Morning Prayers” examines the fragmented nature of traumatic memories, while “invisible” is a desperate cry for help amid suicidal ideation. Multiple poems drop readers into psychiatric treatment facilities; “PAC” describes a Patient Acute Care Unit where the speaker is shackled and “shoved into solitary” while the facility in “Blount County Memorial Was Different” offers counseling, art classes, and smoke breaks. “Community Service” finds the speaker working in a thrift shop that “Nearly broke [them].” The delusional thinking involved in relapses is the focus of “no sweats – i’m in control.” Toxic relationships and longing for ex-lovers are recurring themes. “More Advice from the Heart” features a confrontation in which the speaker’s partner berates him for his promiscuity. In “Faith-Less,” the speaker receives an update from an ex and wonders, “Ever stop long enough to ponder / whether MY heart still belongs to you?” Wild dreams are another recurring theme, like one in which the speaker dreamt “I could cut people / in half with scissors, see into their / souls.” Holstad combines character studies with dark inner monologues in this blunt collection. The poet effectively blends brutality with compassion in poems like “Lamenting,” a piece about gun violence that acknowledges “How hearts are broken, / the many different ways.” Holstad excels at visceral descriptions, like that of Bianca, who had “so many track / marks, it looked like a / river of small lakes on / her torn body.” The scene-setting is equally vivid, like a mental health institution’s “walls crying / a terrible beige.” However, the constant objectification of women (who are relegated to “whores”) and the typecasting of people of color as miscreants may offend readers.

A raw poetry collection with an unrelentingly bleak point of view.