Beforelight

by Matthew Gellman

Beforelight explores queer childhood as a site of rupture and queer coming-of-age as a  process of both becoming and unbecoming.  The speaker in these poems confronts the impacts of ruptured relationships and trauma on his nascent identity.  Grounded, lyrical, and deeply psychological, these poems grapple with the fragility of our most formative relationships—familial, communal, and ancestral—as the speaker searches for a communion with himself, and how not to “make a life out of pain.”

Genres: Poetry

101 pages, Paperback

Published April 30, 2024

Reviews

[Loisa Fenichell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal collection! Gellman deeply understands the way the most generous kind of poetry is that which breaks down the more shameful narratives we tell about ourselves, leaving spacious room for true beauty and nuance.

[AJ Lonski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another incredible collection of poems that reminds me why I love poetry so much.

[Maja Lukic · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are gorgeous, spare, startling poems that rebuild the past with all of its beauty and painful ruptures of childhood, sexual identity, individuality, familial trauma, sorrow, and abandonment. A master image maker, Gellman’s imagination is cinematic and photographic: “We stare at the river quickened by trout, the heron // searching for some sort of talisman, / for something to make its own”; “through the blue vein / of suburb and out toward the cedar forest”; “Through purple ryegrass, like an offering / you carried the rescue back in your arms.” In Gellman’s work, we encounter the clarity of a voice that “will not make a life out of pain.” I highly recommend these beautiful, wise poems.

[Lena Bilik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a gorgeous, devastating, tender collection. Cannot recommend enough. Often reminds me of my favorite Louise Gluck poems - refracted snapshots of childhood, paralleled with expertly rendered images of nature, low-slung light, smells/sights/sounds of the northeast (while never once being trite or cliche). There are lines so good they keep repeating in my head, among them: "This is how it works: the window/ gets stuck, it lets in the rain's slowly darkening language/ and you spend an afternoon trying too hard to close it" and "I am learning silence this way, winter's rule."

[Catherine Pond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such immersive and gorgeous poems-- I can't recommend this book more highly! Gellman spins a world of frost-storms, simmering Octobers, and great blue herons “searching for some sort of talisman” as “autumn wield[s] the cold calculus of its knife to the throat of the flower.” In Beforelight, the speaker’s tenderness and sexuality is continually challenged by the misplaced violence of a suffering world: "I bought it, this cheap sweater the color / of sleep, a little worn at the shoulders. / It is not beautiful like the past / but like the past I wear it."

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"at what point will i stop placing you here?"