Reviewed by Matt Usher
The Ones
by Kathleen Latham
Kelsay Books
October 2024, Paperback, 76 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1639806591
The Ones, by Kathleen Latham, is an aching collection that explores the full process of parting, longing, and belonging. The flow is in that order, largely, at least: the first section is replete with accounts of bad breakups, messy thoughts of rejoining, and the rawness that comes with closeness thwarted. From there we move to more affectionate poems of regret over what was with an urge to try to reclaim it. It’s only toward the end that we find the catharsis of love that abides.
Early in this metanarrative, we encounter a voice that will be consistent throughout the collection. One that “[laughs], too loudly,/drunk with the potency of things unsaid”. This, from ‘On Running into an Ex-lover’; things unsaid would be another apt name for this collection. ‘This is How I Picture Your Bedroom’ closes the initial, unnumbered, section named Perspective. Here the voice ‘[envisions] it all – your room, your bed,/you back – but I never place myself/inside the frame. Instead, you are alone/and I am alone and it is silent.’. Pain flows freely in these words, the raw moments where love is first lost.
The first numbered section is titled The Ones Who Come First. In ‘Love vs. Gravity’, we see the notes (“I thought you were a different man”) of past tense creeping in, the distancing from the crux of parting. “How was I to know you carried/the secret of your surrender in your pocket/like rocks meant to speed your descent?” – a nod to fellow poet Virginia Woolf’s famous denouement. Next, in ‘Closure’, we hear the desperation of trying to forget: “If only it would show me/that you’ve grown fat and bald/or old and ugly. Anything,/to help me get over you.”
Continuing the pattern of nomenclature, we have Those Who Come Next. The apartment is now empty; we feel the lack. “We have all lost something./Ubiquity doesn’t make it trite,/it makes us human.” ‘In Defense of Poems About Heartbreak’ serves, unsurprisingly, as a raison d’etre for the collection itself. We further hear the plaintive voice: “my exes roam the halls of my mind/with abandon. They set up shop in dark corners,/rattle locks and blare music, lounge about”. The lack now fills with memories one feels must be excised with poetry, a mental spring cleaning to clear aside the cobwebs of the past. We range among many feelings, none perhaps more poignant than ‘To the Ones Who Use Their Fists’: “You don’t/deserve/a poem.” The emphasis given its own line: deserve.
Closing the collection is part three, The Ones Who Come Last. Finally, the redemptive strain comes through and hope falteringly tries to stand. Simple things can speak of great love, as in ‘Cranberry Juice’: “I should have known you loved me when I got a UTI in a Motel 6 in San Diego and you went out at three in the morning to get me cranberry juice”. In reflecting, the voice realizes “It took me far too long to understand that sometimes/love is a quiet knock on a closed door.” This is a mature love, one that reflects rather than being caught up in the torrent of young love, blown about like Dante’s second circle lovers. Here, too, we have a testament to a marriage in ‘Again and Again and Again’: “What a gift it is to be found./What a blessing, in this world of billions,/to link hands and know that you are home.” Mature love is like coming home, finding that you are where you have always needed to be.
Pick up this collection if you’re looking for catharsis in looking back on a history of love won and love lost. It is definitely keyed toward a more mature audience, but then might have good advice for the young and inexperienced: it will be painful, but in enduring we find something so much greater. Latham is a passionate poet, one who elides traditional structure in favor of raw emotion and passion.
About the reviewer: Matt Usher is an agender, highly neurodivergent writer and musician who likes poetry, tabletop roleplaying, trading card games (mtg and ygo), and professional wrestling. They are based out of Brooklyn with their two partners in a happy polecule. Most of their works are short stories but it happened that their first credit was in literary criticism. If you want to reach out and/or contact them regarding their reviews or stories (please do), you can find them at https://bsky.app/profile/mattusher.bsky.social