Reading Registers Of Illuminated Villages was a full body experience. This collection was a full course meal- complete with lots of mango- that left me choking up gut wrenching, back heaving sobs. Each poem hit closer and closer to home.
I didn't know what to write about at first, as I found myself overwhelmed with all of the emotions that this collection brought up. Then I came to an understanding, these poems touched a place in me that holds a great deal of grief. This is something I generally have a hard time talking about, and maybe it's time that I give myself to space to do so. Bear with me.
Tarfia Faizullah made me realize something important. Grief is something that will never just go away. To lose a sister is to lose a part of the self. Or maybe the part of the self that could have been- the second chance. The closest thing to you aside from you. Grief is something that morphs, ages, evolve right along with us. For me, it usually it comes in heavy waves, certain dates, certain songs, the particular shade of grey in the sky. But it's never gone. Our sisters live on with us forever, just like our elders who have passed.
Tarfia's words laced across her pages with the stories of more than one self- stories of all the people that make up her. I think this is a big part of losing someone so close to you- you absorb parts of them, forget parts of them, forget parts of yourself.
Themes of death are seamlessly interwoven with themes of growth, dysphoria, womanhood- and I think all of these themes are very much intersectional. Tarfia takes us on a journey that cycles through birth and death and so much in between. Her grief appears throughout each of her poems, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in the tiny little details, the corners, the particular hue of her perspective. It speaks to the beauty of being alive despite all odds being against you.
Throughout the collection, Faizullah refers to a 'You.' I find it interesting that as the book progresses, the subject of the "you" seems to shift. "You" is sister, father, lover, brother. Perhaps "You" is just another variation of the self.
These were some of my favorite poems in the collection:
'Self Portrait As Mango'
'West Texas Nocturne'
'The Performance of No One's Fingers'
"Dark Pairing"
"Because There Is A Sky, Junebug"
I love how you discuss grief as being intersectional with womanhood, growth, dysphoria... I definitely saw her pain as inextricable from desire, like everything poured from the same wellspring. It can be a fundamentally natural and human thing to heal through touch and intimacy (though it doesn't work this way for all bodies), and I really resonated with the way Faizullah complicated healing and desire with each other.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate how you touch on the way Faizullah puts grief in those little corners, the hues and perspectives. It speaks to the magnitude of loss, how it takes with it a part of you. And yes, to the beauty of being alive and surviving, finding a way to live with indefatigable pain.
I love how your post acknowledges one of grief's strangest powers: as private as our individual grief may be, grief also connects us with the universe. Everyone experiences grief, and even though it may look and feel so differently from that of others, there's a way in which we can never truly be alone in it. I appreciate how you point out that Faizullah's mourning is not only for herself - even in our mourning, we are grieving the lost parts of ourselves, and vice versa. This may be the most painful feeling we'll ever have, but it also speaks to our interdependence and the strength of how much humans actually do share between one another.
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