Once: Poems

by Meghan O'Rourke

“The poems in Once illuminate and echo themes of loss and grief.”― Vanity Fair The incandescent poems in Once, the second collection by an astonishing and formidable poet, explore loss, violence, and recovery. Facing a mother’s impending death, O’Rourke invokes a vanished childhood of “American houses, wet / kids moving through them in Spandex bathing suits; / inside, sandwiches with crusts cut off.” But the future hangs ominously over this summer paradise: not just the death of O’Rourke’s mother but the stark civic traumas faced by American citizens in the twenty-first century. “The future,” O’Rourke writes, “is all still / a dream, a night sweat to be swum off / in a wonderland of sand and bread.”

These poems are shadowed by illness, both civic and personal, and by the mysterious currents of grief. What emerges over the course of the volume is a meditation not only on a daughter’s relationship with her mother but also on a citizen’s to her nation. Throughout, Once examines the forces that shape war, divorce, and death, exploring personal culpability and charting uncertain new beginnings as the speakers seek to build homes in a shattered land and find whole selves amid broken, thwarted relationships.

from "Frontier"

      . . . At times,
     I felt sick, intoxicated
     by BPA and mercury.
     At other times I fasted and the stars
     stumbled clear from the vault.
     Up there, the universe stands around drunk.
     I hope the Lord is kind to us,
     for we engrave our every mistake . . .

Genres: Poetry, Grief

92 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2011

About the author

Meghan O’Rourke is the author The Long Goodbye: A Memoir (Riverhead Books, 2011), and the poetry collections Once (W. W. Norton, 2011) and Halflife (W. W. Norton, 2007). A former literary editor of Slate and poetry editor of The Paris Review, she has published essays and poems in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Best American Poetry, and other venues. She is the recipient of the 2008 May Sarton Award for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She splits her time between Brooklyn, NY, where she grew up, and Marfa, TX.

Reviews

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

O’Rourke’s second poetry book is divided into 3 untitled sections, suggestive of before, during, and after. The collection opens with the title poem, “Once,” in which the narrator describes an idyllic childhood. It starts with:
A girl ate ices
in the red summer. Bees
buzzed among the hydrangea,

The first 5 stanzas continue with summer, suggestive of long, slow, days. Then 2 stanzas for fall, followed by 2 stanzas for winter. In the final stanza, life changes drastically.
When spring came, the home
had tilted into the tree’s
long, crooked shadow. Nothing

was the same again.

We get a glimpse of what went wrong from the title of the third poem, “Diagnosis.” Poems with hints of what is happening are interspersed with poems of childhood gatherings.
The future hasn’t arrived. It is all still
a dream, a night sweat to be swum off
in a wonderland of sand and bread.
(Twenty-first Century Fireworks)

The lengthy poem “Preparation” is divided into numbered sections. O’Rourke starts by preparing the house for night.
I walk through the house, turning off the lights.
Perhaps this is a metaphor for preparing for death.
Section 3 is beautifully constructed. It continues the arc of contrasting a past, happy childhood with the reality of the present.
The Adirondack chair where she and I slept one afternoon,
the pool, the sun that burned our skin, the laundry
my father hadn’t done for a month,
the couch on which she slept all day,
This section closes with 2 lines that take us back to laundry, but also hint at the future, made unthinkable by a strike-through.
A shirt came flapping off the laundry line
like a sail or a shroud-no, like a sail.

In the final section, O’Rourke shares the emotional devastation of her mother’s death.
O come down from your weeping cherry,
Mother, and look at how we have scattered
your ashes only in our minds, unable
to let you leave the house-.
(My Mother)
“Seven Months Later” is a lament to the fading sensory knowledge of the mother’s presence. It opens with a terse declarative,
I don’t feel you in the air.
and concludes with 4 lines that seem a summary of the universal experience of grief.
I sat in your chair reading.
Next door the mower started up.
I startled at the noise.
Nothing should be growing.

These poems, while openly acknowledging the speaker’s anguish, do not rant and rail. They are quiet in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the serious situation, while allowing distance. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the stunned disbelief after a loved one has died. There are also several delightful poems describing the family in earlier, much happier times, giving us the feeling that while her mother died much too young, her life was well-lived.

[Luci · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adore her poetry - it's very raw and emotional. I very much want to read her memoir, The Long Goodbye, before I go into too much detail about the poetry. I can't imagine visiting the same experiences through two mediums because I don't think I'd be able to bear it. She does it beautifully in this collection, and I'm hoping that the earlier memoir that covers her mother's diagnosis, illness, and death is equally beautiful and affecting.

[Zabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's an atmospheric intensity to this collection that lingers even after the book is closed, and its impossible to say whether the wistfulness I'm left with now is hers or my own.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a devastating collection of loss, memory, and living in the wake of grief. These poems are carefully written and they spill over with haunting imagery.

[Jeremy Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

O'Rourke is somehow a technician who manages to keep the machine feeling. I was dubious about appreciating this book, considering the foregrounding of certain themes, specifically the specificity of the speaker's grief. How can specificity go wrong in a poem or a collection of poems? Well, I was afraid that the book would invite too much reduction, where we're always tempted to think, "here is a poem about the poet losing her mother." Not that such a statement or sentiment is inherently wrong, but it can absolutely work against the qualities that make a poem more than a simple statement of grief. All that said, O'Rourke avoids such problems, in part by her sheer artfulness (in the proper sense of the term). At no point is there the sense that these poems are anything less than poetry, which is, in a way, of even greater importance as related to grief, where the subject stands to be elevated or banalized by the artistry. O'Rourke knows her craft, using the emotion as its tenor, and does her subject great service.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in Once (which I'm still beginning to read, but wanted to post about while it's in my mind to do that) make me immediately and simply happy. The combination of austerity and structure with powerful feeling is rare. These poems know things--for me that is bedrock--but know without enforcing, only inviting---and that is the clear lake above. One of the strongest poets of the generation now coming into its own, O'Rourke's voice is both sure and fearless.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

O'Rourke's poems in this book are very dreamlike and emotionally charged. Parts I and III seemed to be describing my world in a strangely familiar way. Part I seemed to be speaking of my childhood in a magical and almost personal way. In the same way Part III brought back the all to familiar feelings and emotions of caring for my mother in home hospice. It was so validating and freeing to read such a poetic and beautiful account of this life altering experience.

[Erin Price · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this in a used bookstore's sidewalk box in San Francisco and it is lovely. A dreamy and melancholy collection.

[Suzi!!!]

section I:
striking, tragic, resonant, honest, vivid. my favorite of the 3 sections by far because of how greatly the poetry moved me. by weaving all these devastating, beautiful or commonplace details together so masterfully, meghan o’rourke has framed the emotions that come with grief in a way that is so unique and profound.

section II:
tomato, tomato, booo. these poems felt discordant and awkward, but not intentionally so and only a couple felt as if she was saying something genuinely worth saying,

section III:
admirable recovery from the horror of section iii but not as great as the first. still, these poems were painful in the most well written way.

favorites:
“extraneous”
“preparation”
“inventory”

[Mikah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first section was somewhat weak, it felt like the poet wanted to go deeper but didn't. The second book was the most stirring for me, very evocative and full of interesting imagery. The third book had more of the strength that needed to be in the first section. All in all I'm grateful I pushed through the first one and into the rest because it does get better as it goes.

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Christina M Rau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meghan O'Rourke's Once travels backwards and forwards, making much of the possibility of a forgotten past and all the possible futures the world could have. The subtle changes over time emerge as cracked lights and darker skies while the bigger changes lurk beneath, following the death of a mother figure. The focus changes with each poem between the literal and the figurative with some heavy-handed nature metaphors. Some poems speak to each other like "My Life As A Ruler" being the adult responsible response to "My Life As A Subject," a much more innocent childish time. While some of the shorter poems seem repetitive by the end, the overall collection lives vibrantly.

The highlights:
"Twenty-First Century Fireworks," "The Great Escape," "Elegy: Hill Without Scar," and several parts of the aforementioned poems that really jump with O'Rourke's playing with sound.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just discovered this poet; this book resonates, it is about mothers and daughters, and I am a daughter, and my mother is fading from me in a different way, but i can feel it. the poet writes about very tangible things as someone is dying, a machine that administers morphine boluses, a noisy oxygen machine (which are never quiet, i think they must be loud to remind people to keep breathing); an inventory of belongings modeled on an inventory of grief. she also writes about the intangibles:

"i don't feel you in the air. maybe you grew tired of the earth, maybe the dead do...but i am still here...do you need anything."

Very quiet and powerful....

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found some poems repetitive, and also sometimes the pronouns felt distancing. The center section slipped too far into abstraction for me, especially after the searing personal details of the first section.

Some of my favorite moments:

“The shelf of snow
is loosening on the roof.”

“not a metaphor at all
that disease.”

“On TV a hurricane beats a boat.”

“The sky above your head
blue, lacerated, clear.”

[Gregory Knapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fulfills the promise of her debut, .

[Tim Fredrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of poems that centers on feelings of grief.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong work or personal and national loss. Poignant.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once is an excellent book of poetry. I think my favorite of all the poems is Seven Months Later. It speaks to me because I can totally relate to the words and meaning.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Tasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent companion for a rainy evening.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the first sequence of poems, but for my own tastes, the second and third sections weren't hitting home for me.

[Claire Sibley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.