In CARAPACE, Hallie Fogarty observes the world and its complexities through interactions with and comparisons to bugs. From the shock of a nameless long-dead bug, to the uncertain hope of a dried-up worm returning to wet grass and life, to the indiscernible beauty of the largest moth in North America, Fogarty’s poems showcase how large and layered our existence is when we slow down or stop to acknowledge it. The speaker of the poems enters the collection on the precipice of self-discovery–“I’ve been restless, without sleep… / …craving / everything, nothing, new“–and leaves the readers with a self-acceptance obtained through realizing you are a growing, undefinable part of the natural world, too–“I anatomize myself, my moving body… I hold space for the numerous beings within me, the capable vessel of my body.”

I had the privilege of guest editing Fogarty’s manuscript and seeing it grow from a draft to a cohesive collection that centralizes hope, fate, security, and identity exploration in an ever-changing world. Just as the poems’ speaker(s) pick up on and pick apart the smallest details of the world around them, Fogarty brought each poem to its fullest potential by honing in on even the smallest components of each poem–the presence of a semicolon, where to place a line break, which sound(s) to emphasize in a line, how to make a title carry more of a poem’s weight. Fogarty’s willingness to experiment with several different versions of a line, title, or full poem exemplify her commitment to each individual poem, and I believe the final poems in this collection speak for themselves in showcasing Fogarty’s abilities.

Fogarty’s voice especially shines in the scattered prose poems of the collection, each detailing a subtle Joycean epiphany–the nuances of protecting something that does not or cannot understand that you are protecting it; the fear of the unknown or misunderstood, and the jarring reality of finally coming to see things as they truly are; the realization that you can change and grow without erasing the person (or people) you once were. “Calling Things What They Are” is an especially stand-out poem, which features the speaker encountering a “giant, ugly bug on the concrete sidewalk” and immediately becoming fascinated with its grotesqueness. As the speaker brings someone else over to “bask in its ugliness, its horror,” they instead realize “the bug is smaller, sadder, its bullet body less horrifying now”–and, devastatingly, that the bug had been dead all along. The poem asks readers to sit with the discomfort of realizing you have hurt, discredited, or invalidated something you misunderstood from the very beginning.

Other standout poems in the collection include “August,” “Protection,” and “Cocoon.”

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