I have a confession for you. I don’t read near as much poetry as I should. Yeah, I’ll buy books of poetry and skim them, stopping on the titles that catch my eye, but it’s rare that a collection captures me from the first poem to the last, and that each poem in between holds up. There. It’s out. I’m a picky poetry reader.
Color me lucky to get my hands on a second stellar book of poetry from A Midsummer Night’s Press (this following Raymond Luczak’s Mute a few weeks ago). This time, it’s Handmade Love, a first full-length collection by Julie R. Enszer.
Maybe it’s that I’m currently lacking a strong lesbian presence in my life. Maybe it’s that I miss The L Word, having bonded with the program’s wonderfully-aggravating characters, and that its reality replacement, The Real L Word, has left me a little limp. Or here’s a mind-bender. Maybe it’s just that Enszer’s poetry transcends all lines, labels, and boxes and makes me feel like I’m sitting in a bar, with a friend, catching up and sharing secrets.
Handmade Love is like reconnecting with that college pal seven or eight years post-graduation and meeting over drinks to discuss your parallel lives. Falling in love. The complexities of maturation, of friendship, of death. The challenges of same-sex marriage, or, hell, the challenges of marriage, period.
Enszer writes with the confidence and lyricism of my all-time favorite poet, Maya Angelou. In “When We Were Feminists,” she rattles off the line, “When you cook with the leisure of a weekend,” in such way that you dance into a foreign kitchen, smell a pot of something exotic on the stove, and invite yourself to stay for dinner.
There’s humor, too. In the laugh-out-loud “Terms of Endearment,” the speaker struggles with the proper term to flirt with a transgendered female-t0-male after mistakenly referring to him as “missy.” See, straight allies? We fumble with words, too. But in the end, it’s not words that really matter, but the feelings behind them, the “affection” and “erotic predilections” that reverberate with every other syllable.
The heart of the book, though, beats strongest with poems like “Plumbing” and “Making Love After Many Years,” two of the best- like it or not, Julie – bait and switch, subtly rallying political poems I’ve read in a long, long time. These poems show that same-sex relationships are every bit as mundane, as wonderful, as complex and mysterious as those legally sanctioned by law. When the regulator valve/springs a leak after Thanksgiving,/I turn off the water main and the hot-water heat… In the chill of our house,/ she learns new things about me:/I can wash dishes in a pot/with only a half gallon/of water… (From “Plumbing”) or we bound into bed with amorous anticipation only to have/our pheromones masked by tryptophan; our sultry eyes turn/from ‘come hither’ to ‘way over yonder,’ and we move from sex/to sleep (From “Making Love After Many Years). Pit these poems against California’s Prop 8 and Prop 8 withers and dies.
What does it say about A Midsummer Night’s Press that the last two books of poetry I’ve read (cover to cover – remember, that’s quite a feat for me) have blown my mind and changed parts of me? That they’ve built bridges between people who are different? That they’ve made me want to be a better poet?
What does it say about Julie R. Enszer and Handmade Love that I have sort of fallen in love with her through these poems?
Well, it would probably never work between us. But Julie, if you want to meet for a cocktail, let me know. The first round’s on me. And if you want to call me missy, be my guest.
