Tag: review

CARAPACE creates “vibrant images of external and internal worlds,” a review by Reynie Zimmerman

Hallie Fogarty’s poems in CARAPACE are attentive to detail, drawing careful focus to simple moments often passed over. Fogarty shows familiar images under a new lens: little holes seen in the sidewalk are spaces once occupied by living things, caterpillars carried out of the yard are riding on a “magic carpet” of paper, ladybugs infesting the narrator’s office are not a nuisance but a potential family being separated through their removal.

These poems are alive with a sense of motion in nature, a presence evoked through Fogarty’s use of pleasant sounds in lines like “Floral action energizes / frenetic and unfounded” and “Irises undress themselves.” These images linger in the mind; Fogarty paints for us a world full of lush color and living things coexisting.

This harmony is juxtaposed against the narrator’s internal struggle to feel confident of the care they exhibit against their habitual “straying / from being comforted.” The narrator grapples with their feelings of “malice.” This strife is strong in my favorite poem of CARAPACE, “Calling Things What They Are.” Here the narrator describes a “fucked up bug,” before expressing guilt over assigning it this label: “I flinch at my bringing an audience for its humiliation.” In a poem of long sentences, Fogarty writes a short final sentence, drawing emphasis to the narrator’s furthered feeling of guilt, stating “It’s been dead the whole time.”

CARAPACE also showcases Fogarty’s illustrations, accompanying the poems to amplify their messaging. The narrator’s attempt to return the bodies of dried worms to the dirt, is coupled with a drawing of a worm wriggling in the corner of the page, an endearing image highlighting the narrator’s respect for these creatures. Fogarty takes care to illustrate the patterns of a moth’s wings, the spots of a ladybug, but leaves “Calling Things What They Are” without illustration. This leaves the reader to find the image of the bug through the narrator’s criticism of it, heightening the sense of guilt in this poem, while allowing the image to morph as the narrator revises their judgment of the bug: “the bug is smaller, sadder, its bullet body less horrifying now.”

CARAPACE ends in a poem of hope, “Cocoon.” Fogarty has created a narrator who worries about their capacity to hurt, while extending care to the small beings around them. “Cocoon,” brings a realistic and cathartic ending to CARAPACE, interspersing observations of the world with ways the narrator is taking care of themself. Fogarty writes about this journey to accept the self with “I find myself filling my own shoes, letting my fingers freeze if it means I can stay with the leaves a minute more.”

Fogarty’s poems in CARAPACE are tender and evocative, creating vibrant images of external and internal worlds. The mundane is repainted as something worthy of attention, the bugs are beings capable of creating connections, and the narrator finds space to reconcile and accept themself. 

by Reynie Zimmerman

–&tp

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“A cohesive collection that centralizes hope, fate, security, and identity exploration in an ever-changing world”: A review of CARAPACE by guest editor Jade Driscoll

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.”

Purchase a copy of CARAPACE by Hallie Fogarty on the And Then Shop, debuting April 4, 2025!

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“The final poems feel like that moment of relief right when we wake up from a relentless nightmare.” A Review of Awaken from poet Cody Tieman

In awaken, Jade Driscoll explores the suffering that often accompanies existing in a human body. Many poems center around experiences of anxiety and depression, exposing how mental illness can impact a person’s life. Driscoll’s poems successfully create a sense of the inescapable. No matter where the speaker goes, suffering seems to follow. Even when asleep, the dreamscape conveys an intense and all encompassing pain. In “dreaming of nightmares,” the speaker, even when devoured by killer bugs, still longs “for times when the tortuous rapping on my window/was more than simply a branch.”

In the standout poem titled “notes for playing the role of formerly-suicidal,” we witness a mostly one-sided conversation between a director and an actor. The director provides instructions for how the actor must dress, speak and carry herself. Space is provided for the actor to respond, but the actor does not or cannot speak. In a moment of clarity, the speaker finally says, “I think I’d like to play a different role.”  The poem asks us to reflect on important questions: What roles are we willing to play? Who is creating these roles?  Why are we so often willing to play along? The poem reminds us that the stories we cling to only hold power if we believe those narratives are true. 

This chapbook packs a quick series of punches, but mercifully pulls back in the last few pages. In one of the final poems titled “jade (adj.),” the speaker reclaims the language and identity once used against her. The final poems feel like that moment of relief right when we wake up from a relentless nightmare. The pain we felt while asleep, real or not, can be released when we’re awake. Or we can let it ruin our day. The choice is ours. If we’ve really paid attention, that pain can transform us.

Cody Tieman
June 15, 2023
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“Driscoll deftly navigates violence, mental health, and girlhood with bravery, openness, and vulnerability…” Read the first review of Awaken by poet Hallie Fogarty

In her chapbook Awaken, Michigan poet Jade Driscoll deftly navigates violence, mental health, and girlhood with bravery, openness, and vulnerability. Driscoll’s stark voice and powerful imagery is seen best in lines like “Never again will I let metal / split my skin or let another boy think / he is the vital thrum of my blue veins” in the poem “split wrists” and “when constellations and whispering winds / lost to periwinkle and ripe peach flesh” in the poem “siren sunrise.” Both Driscoll’s sharp, striking account of mental illness and her experiments with form make this chapbook compellingly readable while still surprising readers with moments like “maybe I could find myself / by tearing myself apart” in the poem “once a week” and “each time i dive into water // I wish for suffering that never comes” in the piece “each time i dive into water.” Despite her necessary honesty in exploring suicide and violence against the self, Driscoll ultimately leaves the audience with hope and dignity, both in the penultimate poem “jade (adj.)” with the unforgettable line “Everything beautiful and powerful and necessary is jade.” as well as with ending the final poem “my sunshine” with the lines: “that they know how wonderful life will be every time I / choose to / stay.” Other standout poems of the collection include “molly comes to my birthday party,” “on watching Dead Poets Society in sophomore english five weeks after trying to kill myself,” “split wrists,” and “jade (adj.).”

Hallie Fogarty
June 9, 2023
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