Anatomic

by Ali Lawrence

Poetry. "This small book of flesh/no flesh takes, as its swift gesture, the act of inscribing something on the arm as much as the leg, the heart as much as the head. This book is a mental and bodily map of desire. Writing is what we read right there, on the 'new walls' of the skin, and it makes the skin react with, as this writer deliciously describes, a 'fine bristle'"--Bhanu Kapil.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Lisa M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book at the 2011 AWP. I was attracted to the fact that it was published in the San Francisco/Bay area (I like a lot of work that comes out of that area.) I also loved the beautiful cover, and the fact that most of it consisted of prose poems (I was really into them at the time. Still am, just less so.) This collection is divided into three sections. The first is mediocre, the second is terrible, and the third is the best (but not great.) My biggest issue with this collection is that the poet relies too heavily on abstraction. It was hard to wade through many of the poems and grope for a meaning (and many of the poems lacked insightful/aesthetic moments to make it worth it.) This abstraction, plus the fact that many— mainly in the second section— focus on anatomy and anatomical terms makes it difficult to understand/walk away from these poems with any kind of meaning. Even when I reached meaning in the beginning, the work did not really justify the effort. There were bursts of poetic moments/beauty, but not enough. I honestly dreaded reading this and finishing it. The third section came as a breath of fresh air. Lawrence sheds the heavy use of anatomical terms and gets down to business. Topics include teen female sexuality, love, drugs, and death. While the abstraction did not fully go away, poetic pleasure was more common in this section. This book would have appealed to me a lot more if it followed the style of the third section. I will admit that I did not do much (or at times, any) medical research while reading this (hard to access internet at my job on my break.) But, I feel that I shouldn’t have to do loads of research to understand a poem (perhaps to fully enjoy it, but not understand it.) THe third section prevents me from giving this away and makes me think I might return to it again in the future, and put in a little more hard work.