Perennial

by Kelly Forsythe

The events of 1999’s Columbine shooting preoccupy Forsythe in these poems, refracting her vision to encompass killer, victim, and herself as a girl, suddenly aware of the precarity of her own life and the porousness of her body to others’ gaze, demands, violence. Deeply researched and even more deeply felt, Perennial inhabits landscapes of emerging adulthood and explosive cruelty―the hills of Pittsburgh and the sere grass of Colorado; the spines of books in a high school library that has become a killing ground; the tenderness of children as they grow up and grow hard, becoming acquainted with dread, grief, and loss.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

75 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2018

Reviews

[Erica Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This moving, clear-eyed reflection on Columbine recalls innocence before the attack—teenage crushes, mall trips, & celebrity posters—as well as trauma after. An impressive debut that gets right to the fragile, human heart of a politicized issue.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful but dark, Perennial talks about violence before and after the Columbine shootings taking you through all the emotions of a teenage girl trying to deal with the massacre.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like I had a hard time accessing the poems in this collection. Some, like "Homeroom," are absolutely masterful in their ability to situate you in a place and time. But many of them left me feeling like I was missing something important, some clue that would help me grasp what the author was getting at. In the end I felt that I would have gotten more out of this collection if I had read more about the events surrounding the Columbine shooting. There's a specificity that's a bit alienating at times.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of poems addresses the school shooting at Columbine. The poet examines vulnerability before as well as after (and during) the shooting. The poems are often indirect but sometimes surprisingly to the point (the spines of the library books being a particularly vivid image).

The poems touched me, made me sad and angry but I was grateful for the beauty of the language that delivered the hard news.

[Luke Gorham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A subtly disconcerting collection, inscrutable violence always cresting the edges of the page. Incubated in the psyche of a post-Columbine world, Forsythe evinces a young mind awoken to a maelstrom reality no longer blanketed in safety. Perhaps situated to be most distinctly powerful to millennials, Forsythe punctuates the disorienting chaos of her pages with a hyper-specificity of era detail - trapper keepers and late 90s music populate these pages - a gambit that generates a particularly disturbing recall resonance for those of a like age.

Formally, the poet is less ambitious here, adhering largely to concise syntax and consistent structure, employing only a couple linguistic tics that lose strength under the stress of repetition. But largely, her austere language lands, a powerful mirroring of a mind in temporal limbo, allowing only for the primal and impressionistic. And in moments when Forsythe extends into explorations of uncontrolled, a-contextualized dread, she darkly shines:

In 7th grade I had reoccurring dreams of a man in a mime costume.
I was sure I could hear him.

[Emily Perkovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some pieces in this book were definitely five star, but there were also several that just fell completely short for me. Still a good collection.

[Rebecca Stoner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perennial is a really lovely, engrossing book. It jumps back and forth between the author's experiences as a twelve-year-old girl in 1999 ("I clip my bangs back with a plastic butterfly...I hate my body this way it has become, need compression to bind the newness flat into me.") and reflections on the Columbia massacre. She's learning, frighteningly quickly, about vulnerability: to men, to violence, and to human connection. Without downplaying the reality of harm, Forsythe's poetry is a touching, lyrical argument for remaining open to one another. The first day back at school after the massacre, she writes, "we / noticed boys' hair, we noticed the color / black, we noticed each other's / hands, we noticed each other."

When we talk about political poetry, we often say that it speaks directly to our particular moment. But Forsythe's poetry speaks not only to now, but also to any time in which people have wanted to shut others out as a response to their own understanding of their vulnerability. In that way, it's timeless.

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profound book that evokes powerful imagery. Focusing on the events that occurred at the Columbine shooting, Forsythe’s vision for the book is clearly established with the tone that is set in the beginning and carried to the end.

I slowly made my way through this book because each poem deserved some time to sink in and because Forsythe does a great job of drawing you into each of them.

This book is especially necessary because school shootings still occur to this day. “Safety / had changed & no one / was ready” but that was then and now this book is here, interspersed with empathy, and by the end of your reading you can’t help but feel hope that today’s efforts will bring about a difference and change.

[Tatiana]

I'm discontinuing my reading of Perennial because in my opinion, it turns a spotlight on the teenagers who brought terror on Columbine High School. A cursory glance at reviews, both GR and otherwise, tells me I'm in the minority, that the literary value should outweigh the subject matter. To that I say, the poems didn't grab me, either, their scope so narrow as to be repetitive, their language too muddled to send the reader off with anything more than a blurred canvas.

[eden ʚ♡ɞ]

i can't really rate this because... poetry really isn't my thing and since i feel like i can't really *understand* it, i'm not able to fairly judge it.

reading this though, gave me a feeling of unease - both because i know a lot about columbine but also because of the writing.

so i mainly felt like i didn't understand most of it, but some poems i did like are: planner notes, 7th grade, day zero, witness, i wanted to live of course—, and my fav: cliff theory.

[Sammie · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book was ok , its not really my cup of tea .

[Call Me [Brackets]]

Hide under a desk, no it’s not for nuclear fallout, but maybe the desk can actually help you this time. Maybe, no one will be able to find you if you close your eyes. Hopefully the gun runs out of bullets faster than the shooter runs out of targets. Why is this happening? The world is never going to be as fair and beautiful as we all wish; the amount of violence that we allow to permeate through our society is making sure of it. Don’t tell me that you really believe that this can’t be happening. It is.

How do we deal with the aftermath of tragedy? And how does it create irreversible damage that can never truly be dealt with? If you are exposed to it in a way where “I didn’t even know / I was alive // until the last moment” the likelihood of being able to move on and become a whole person again is very small. In this, her debut collection, Kelly Forsythe makes the arguments that it is exactly that situation in which people are lost such that there is no coming back to the reality that makes life easy to live. This applies to the next day; “It felt strange to return to this space / the next day, or rather this concept: / a room meant as a home”; as well as years in the future.

Perennial hauntingly explores a side of the Columbine shooting that is not commonly seen: the view of a young girl who has had to live her life as a non-fatality, a survivor but still a victim. Throughout the collection, Forsythe delves into grief from and exposure to one of the most scarring forms of violence that someone can bear witness to. “By the end / of April, we were / examining our own / potential for violence. / It wasn’t that he was less / immaculate. Safety / had changed” a few lines from an early poem read. They show that in the wake of tragedy, it does not matter who is involved, the world shakes and everyone who hears about it is affected in some way. No one can seem to escape the violent nature that is more or less instilled in us since we were young: “we couldn’t touch / each other for fear / of each other’s unknowns.”

You can read the rest of our review on our website here: https://callmebrackets.net/perennial/

[Jaci Millette Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Forsythe’s collection chronicles a girlhood that is forced to cope with the violence and vulnerability of the Columbine shootings. Her allusions to a late 90s female adolescence (butterfly clips, Lisa Frank, trapper keepers, Bonnie bell lip gloss) is so relatable and channels a once-known innocence tarnished by and juxtaposed with an incomprehensible violence in a once-safe place. Her poems mark Columbine as a sort of genesis of the the senseless and increasingly ubiquitous violence our culture is sadly getting desensitized to. Columbine was the first large scale act of brutal violence in a school and it was a massive thing for someone young to reckon with— and yet we are still reckoning and still trying to figure out why our culture permits or even conceives them: “Are we too weak to say the word violent / Are we trying not to embarrass anyone / He felt so brutal in his vulnerability.”

I can appreciate these poems and their intentions, but stylistically I am typically drawn to lyrical poems with more clever or jarring uses of enjambment. So many lines break on words like when, the, like, but, a, etc. and words like those do not incite a lot of audible or visual interest. I also felt some of them were a bit inaccessible, but I do not want to discredit the poems or imply they are not well written because it is a cohesive and impactful collection overall.

Notable poems include Curved, Call to Action, Cliff Theory, Imagining an Aftermath, and Perennial.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I bought this on a bit of a whim after reading the first few poems and didn't expect the collection to be so one-note. It's always kind of disappointing when you start a book expecting one thing and then get another (but that's on me for not skimming well enough :P). There were a few poems I really liked ("Historical Documents," "1999," "Helix," "Homeroom," "Part Nocturne") but overall I was just looking for some more variety. I thought Forsythe was at her strongest when she was writing about the body: as self, as object, as target. I guess this is a very timely collection, due to its predominant subject matter (school shootings).

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The depth, breadth, and disturbing beauty in which Forsythe explores the Columbine shootings took my breath away.

[Paris (parisperusing) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kelly Forsythe’s Perennial is an episodic, breathtaking eulogy for the lives lost to Columbine. With each turn, you can tell she poured herself into these pages, each stanza reads like a psalm, interrupted at times by a fusillade of heartbeats.

Selecting one and not the others is like choosing your favorite child — how could I? Still: “Library Version,” “Red Earth,” “Requiem,” “Call to Action” and — okay, okay! — the one that slit me open, “Planner Notes, 7th grade.”

We did not become
what I wanted but I was content
getting sick off ember vapors
illuminating your body
…
Safety
had changed & no one
was ready; we were
hitting the windows
with our palms, asking
to be looked after/ looked in on

These bone-breaking verses are wet with mourning, with appeal: “to be ... looked in on” — I cried then.

Locked inside each poem is a gasp of air, a memory, a spirit crossing back and forth between realms invisible to the mortal eye. Get this book, you won’t regret it.

[Carmen Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this poetry book was well made, it was not my preference for poetry. However, I believe this book has important messages of what it means to live through a shooting (specifically the Columbine shooting), how violence affects youth, and growing up in a world that is a complicated mess. These topics I believe are important to digest, though I wasn't always a fan of how samey some of these poems turned out to be.

I always have a love-hate relationship with contemporary poetry, but I think Forsythe has some interesting moments happening in her poems such as "Today is a cycle: the / physical boundaries / of our bodies are cruel / against the shell of school," from the poem "No, Everything." What Forsythe does well is create an atmosphere in a very specific place, even if I am not a huge fan of everything in here, I can appreciate what she is trying to say, especially to the youth of today.

[Laura B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm definitely in the demographic to appreciate a lot that this book is aiming for, and especially in the moments built out of the narrator's own lived history i'm so sold. some of these poems feel like they came out of the elder millenial hive-mind unconscious or something, crisp in their "are we all living the same life"-ness of adolescence. but honestly, the columbine-rewrite shtick feels a little off to me, and never fully gets off the ground imo. those are the poems i'm least interested in, as they don't really elevate or push at the content, just drag it in as a form of reference or as something textural to play around with, which then feels a little odd, considering. all that said, i do think Forsythe has some poetic chops and is exactly in my wheelhouse with pushes toward the formal and abstract while maintaining a narrative and a devotion to line/sound. would read more by this author.

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got drawn quickly into the world of this poet and became more and more of a fan as I read on. A number of the poems deal with the Columbine school massacre, making Forsythe perhaps the poet laureate of the movement against gun violence, but there are also tender love poems such as Springtime and Cliff Theory (which begins with abundant empathy and ends with some concern), and many other things. Forsythe expertly stays on the edge of memory and expression, always seeming to be saying something but making you look between the words, and within yourself, for the meaning.

[Kate Gaskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Perennial, Kelly Forsythe examines the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in emotional, cultural, and historical contexts. As she weaves musical, often surreal narratives around the event itself, Forsythe mimics the hormonal rushes and travails of adolescents at the tense precipice of adulthood. This is a tense and beautifully written book that stands as an unfortunately timely reminder of the reverberations of contemporary gun violence. It also serves as a time capsule of late '90s adolescence in a way that is sweetly nostalgic.

[Rebecca Schwarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I make a habit of grabbing a few volumes of poetry from the new arrivals shelf whenever I visit the library. I bounce off most, but this one drew me in. I didn't read the back, so I did not know the subject of this collection when I started reading through it, which made the experience feel revelatory, nostalgic, and of course heartbreaking. This deep meditation on this one iteration of a news story we see far too often is well worth your time.

[Rach · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a bombshell of a collection. To live through a young girl - body changing, life changing, so many things changing - and see the violence of Columbine was haunting, to say the least. But this collection took this all too sensitive subject and opened it up in a way that really shocked me. Her poems were tender, raw, and real. She gives truth to the reality of school violence in a way that was beautiful but still left me with chills.

Really wonderful book.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An innovative and creative approach to collapsing time and space, effectively showing the emotional impact of a national tragedy upon a nation. I love weaving in and out of experience. Some of my favorite moments:

Pink flower, say goodbye, goodbye!

Lord, forgive me the chat rooms.

I am still glued to myself.

The wind makes the trees move on their insides.

I drew a fate and then I drew a fate inside my mouth.

your whole self sending back its savage necessities.

[théo. · Rating 2 out of 5]

i think the topics of this book definitely need to be talked about and could’ve been very powerful and eye-opening, but i don’t think the author did a good job getting her message across. she’s not a very good poet and her poems had little to no flow, so the meaning got lost in the poor quality of her writing and random statements that completely threw off my understanding of the what she was talking about.

[Ashly Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems in this book have an air of innocence about them which is especially poignant when coupled with the extreme violence that weaves itself throughout the pieces. This book feels current and unfortunately necessary today. It is an example of how dark childhood can be and reflects some of the horrible things that have happened in our country in recent (and less recent) years.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems specifically speak to the trauma of the Columbine massacre, but they speak more universally, too -- the perennial, ever-present nature of trauma, how it fades and blooms but never really goes away. The use of flower images and metaphors provides a contrast to the violent and bloody subject of the poems.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book but I struggled to even finish it. I felt like the language was vague, for lack of better term, and random that I couldn't put my finger on what she was talking about most of the time. Every once and awhile I was able to understand the poem but not enough for me to enjoy it.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy a single poem in this collection, partly because none of the poems stand on their own. If no one had told me this collection was about Columbine, I wouldn’t have known. There are hints, sure, but this reads like poetry working really really hard to be poetry: riddles created by a deliberate deletion of words that would clarify grammar and subject.

[Carlos Mueses · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journal is a beautiful piece of writing. Loved this work.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart sensitive poems about relationships and life from the youthful perspective.