Reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp
Informed
by Alison Stone
NYQ Books
May 2024, $18.95, 108 pages, ISBN: 978-1630451073
Memory is at the heart of Alison Stone’s new collection of pantoums, ghazals, villanelles and several other verse forms. “Everywhere I go, I take my dead,” she begins the pantoum, “Cargo.” “Time would pass, and so would we,” she concludes “Time Pantoum.” “Childhood’s a house of slanted rooms / at the intersection of nostalgia and pain,” she concludes the final poem, “House,” likewise a pantoum.
Indeed, childhood is at the center of the long memory pantoum that concludes Part 3, “Suburban Development,” which captures the ethos and uncertainties of coming of age in the 1970s, the school cliques, the awkwardness, the denial of death (“My brother’s friend fell off his bike and died. / Mom cried, then never said his name again.”). She writes about the constant changes, people moving away, women’s lib coming into focus, girls’ developing bodies. “Whenever my life changed, something was lost.”
The pantoum “Learning” is likewise a memory about the jungle that is high school. “Somehow most of us survived” is the line that bookends the school bus rides, the cruelty of classmates, the teacher who looked down girls’ shirts, the teenaged helplessness in the face of authority.
This is all the stuff of memory, memory’s unfinished business, biting us all the time, like Joyce’s Agenbite of inwit. As she writes in “House”: “What’s incomplete pursues us everywhere. // The past takes so much attention.”
Past romances are always unfinished, even when they are over. “Rocky Horror Pantoum” is a memory of the era of the cult film when everyone dressed up for the midnight shows. “I spent much of the show in a bra and slip.” She fancies a boy named Paul, though “dating a boy who played Brad.” The pantoum “Romance” begins “We’re dumb, dizzy. Smug with love.” It ends: “we’re dumb, dizzy, drugged with love.” Ah, youth!
“Dead lovers are the hardest to forget,” is how Stone begins and ends “Louder than Laughter.” “We inhale the past with every breath” is another recurring line in the poem. Similarly, “Many Shades” ends “Pushed aside and named the past, / lost loves never finish disappearing.”
“Mnemonic Pantoum” asks, “How is it decided which memories last?” She goes on in the poem to observe, “Time takes back some joy, some shame.” The third grade crush remains.
“One to Keep” asks the question, “Allowed only one memory, which would you choose?” The poem involves her grandfather, stricken with Alzheimer’s, his memory of long-dead customers vivid while he seems unfamiliar with his wife and daughters standing before him.
One of Stone’s ghazals from Part 2, in fact, is titled “Memory.” It begins:
The shame, the clench, the slap of memory.
Years wasted in the trap of memory.
“There’s always something more that can be lost,” Stone begins – and ends – the pantoum, “Something More.” The poem expresses the familiar theme, but it’s set during the pandemic lockdown and reflects the isolation. Several pantoums take place in the context of the lockdown, including “Shelter in Place,” “Quarantine Morning,” and “Quarantine Beltane.” The ghazals “Just Emotion?” and “Tactile Ghazal” are others.
Stone is a master of formal poetry, not just the prescribed intricacies but making them work for her insightful, heartfelt content. Especially in her pantoums, the repeated lines take on a deeper meaning. “Picket Fence,” a poem about a secretly dysfunctional family, begins, “The mother drinks in secret.” It ends: “The mother drinks in secrets.” She keeps her husband’s violent temper to herself, her daughter’s trauma.
Divided into four parts, Informed begins with a section of pantoums, then a section of ghazals, followed by a mix of villanelles and other forms, including the charming tanka, “I Love You, Stormy Daniels.”
Sweet the cuffs will close
due to a porn star he said
looks like his daughter.
Cops got Capone for taxes,
too. Who’s grabbed by the crotch now?
Ah, if only! “Say Her Name” is an acrostic about the police brutality at the heart of Sandra Bland’s arrest and murder. The collection ends with another section of pantoums.
“Charlottesville Pantoum” is another poem that takes on bigotry. It begins: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” / Heather Heyer posts. (Her last post)”. Stone herself is obviously outraged, bitterly mocking Trump.
Some very fine people / chant
Jews will not replace us.
The president says, (No more dogwhistles)
some very fine people.
If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
Stone’s ghazals are as impressive as her pantoums. The ghazal is an ancient poetic form with roots in seventh century Arabic verse, full of longing and regret. The ghazal is thus a necessarily introspective expression.
The form’s structure is strict, consisting of a series of independent couplets linked by an abstract theme, by the repetition of a single word and by a recurring internal rhyme. The last couplet of a ghazal is often more introspective than the previous couplets, summing up and collecting the previous thoughts in a more personal reflection. Stone’s 2020 collection, Zombies at the Disco, is all ghazals, over seventy of them.
The ghazal “Time” channels a familiar theme. Like a number of others, it takes place during the lockdown. It starts:
Quarantine. The pets get no alone time.
We can’t stop its damage, why bemoan time?
The poem ends with the self-reflection:
Nothing’s yours, Alison. Not those you love
best. Even this body’s on loan from time.
“Lost Ghazal” is another timely poem with contemporary political commentary, this time an allusion to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, “lost” the recurring word.
How close lie pleasure and oblivion.
Till Roe – missed period, dead rabbit, lostfuture. The waning moon makes her wonder
about old boyfriends – cop, convict, Brit. Lostto time or wives.
The ghazal ends on the self-reflection:
I want to die fully spent, each heart-stone
turned. Dissatisfaction, that culprit, lost.
“Well-Lit” is an optimistic meditation – “The world needs more light” – that also recalls old loves:
I fell arse over tits for a British
drummer, his leather pants, gray pallor. Lightchanged to song by his sticks. Sex is debt both
bodies build, then pay. Victim/captor, light-drenched tangled limbs. There are places folks don’t
come back from, acts that close the door on light.
Regret? Warning? But Alison Stone ends the ghazal with this confident counsel to herself:
Too easy, Stone, to despair in the dark.
Write swing-state postcards, work to restore light.“April Ghazal,” whose keyword is “spring,” ends on a similar sentiment:
Let your life’s constraints melt off like snow. Speak
truth loudly, Alison. Grow bold with spring.Yes! “Home to Roost,” a ghazal built on “song,” likewise ends with an optimistic exhortation:
Though it can be hard to love the world, find and
inhale beauty, Alison. Exhale song.
Alison Stone’s poetry is a sheer delight to read, not just for the cleverness and elegance of her verses or for the insights to which we can all relate, the regret that we all recognize often comes with the territory of memory, but for the infectious positivity her poems ultimately exude.
About the reviewer: Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? was recently published by Kelsay Books, and another collection of persona poems and dramatic monologues involving burlesque stars, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, was just published by BlazeVOX Books.