PASSING

by Eloise Klein Healy

“Between little corner taquerias/ and Thai home cooking joints,” Eloise Klein Healy renders a post-modern Los Angeles, weaving elegies, lyrics and meditations into a provocative assemblage. She anchors the book with poems exploring gender identity and social relations, meditating on the Civil Rights movement (“our unnatural disaster over race”), the scourges of breast cancer and AIDS. She elegizes sister-poet Lynda Hull and honors the “oldest human assignment”―burying a parent. Read this collection for its wisdom, rage, and wry wit, for Healy’s intelligent probing into contemporary culture. ―Robin Becker, author of The Horse Fair

Genres: Poetry, Queer

88 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful, indulgent, sentimental. in this collection, we travel through the eyes of the sensitive lover, set in California but also bridging connections to other parts of the world. this lover-traveller-poet bridge reminds me of Joni Mitchell’s Blue album; nomadic, observational, curious, honest and mildly humorous but still wistful and longing. lesbian-informed.

my favourites:
- asking about you (a must read)
- living here now (“settle into the oldest human assignment, bury your father and live forever as a stranger in that town” reminds me of succession. and other shows)
- los angeles is a virgo
- postcard
- annie abandoning me (“you’re really only alive in the poems i wrote to solve my desire” after hitting us with five insanity-inducing stanzas…)
- suite for a young man dying (wow.)
- passing

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are effortlessly beautiful poems and I love most of them. I felt at home in them. Even the jarring moments seemed welcome. I would have rated the collection higher, but I don't particularly care for sestinas, and there are a few in here. They've always felt very unnatural to me, and the form more often than not prevents me from fully engaging in the poem. It's a minor critique, but it prevented me from experiencing uninterrupted joy from the book, which I may have done otherwise; most of the poems are that good.

[Morgan Kail-Ackerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. The author is a lesbian poet and teacher writing about mythology, animals, and Los Angeles. So I really like her.

Favorite poems: Los Angeles is a Virgo, Postcard, The Beach at Sunset, me up at does like e e cummings, Something for the Portuguese, The Suicide’s Numbers, Asking About You, Looking out the Window of the Andy Warhol Museum, More, Muse Muse Muse, Where I Come From, The Test, Changing What We Mean, About

[Brendan]

Rating: 3 1/2

Favorites:
"Suite for Young Man Dying"
"Annie Abandoning Me"

I was thinking of first love.
You were, too - but not of me.
- "me up at does like e e cummings"

Spring that year found me crazy with hope
and face to face with the untouchables -
yuccas, women, solitude, poetry.
- "Pitiless Editing Took Place Then"

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

neat! Loved “Passing” the most

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the penultimate poem of Eloise Klein Healy’s Passing, titled “About,” she writes, “There’s a next to all of it that’s comforting – the movement/of clouds” (83) which typifies the quiet wisdom of this admirable book. On the surface, this collection, which deals with the many levels of dying human beings encounter in life, could be read as a series of elegies for these deaths. Actually, it is about how moving through these life events “holds [us] closer to [ourselves]” (83) and makes life, which is “soon over” (84), more appreciated.

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the strongest books of poetry I've read this year.