Atrophy

by Jackson Burgess

In this collection of 52 thematically-linked poems, Jackson Burgess examines heartbreak, depression, and empathy through a lens of rigorous introspection. Dive bars, gas stations, parking lots, and snowfields comprise the setting, as the speaker asks: what do we feel? What should we feel? Who gets to feel what? The poems are mercurial in location and nature, and recurring characters serve as touchstones, forming the basis of the book's narrative. Much of the collection is about or directly addresses an ex-lover, Lily. In the wake of that failed relationship, Atrophy wrestles with loneliness, addiction, obsession, dissociation, and longing, utilizing lists, apostrophic letters, prose poems, and free verse. These poems celebrate the past while mourning it, trying to make sense of what happened with the advantage of retrospect. Vodka, rabbits, smoke, knives, love letters, and ghosts--the world depicted is at times grim, at times absurd, but always human. Think Richard Siken meets Denis Johnson, with a splash of Frank Stanford. The frontispiece poem, "Van Gogh," ends with the lines: I had the idea I could drink my way back into our bedroom, that same sagging mattress, our clothes scattered like snow, like fingertips in a freezer left open in case the butcher comes back. Atrophy is vulnerable, confessional, and sonically curious, a series of self-examinations spanning cities and emotional states.

Genres: Poetry

102 pages, Paperback

Published September 21, 2018

Reviews

[Elisabeth Bialosky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jackson Burgess' poetry has such a unique way of description and emotion. It isn't delicate at all, but rather biographical without an ego.

[Spencer Ballard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The style of Burgess' poetics brings to mind a descriptor of a dear mentor of mine (Professor Lance Olsen), "the circus of the mind in motion". Reading Atrophy felt to me like being let in on a secret, or rather the cache of secrets that lives, desperate and frantic, deep within each of our psyches (or sometimes flailing on the surface, torrentializing the splash zone of our relationships). I'm a shameless voyeur when it comes to an author making the decision to lay some part of themself bare on the page, and Jackson does this with clear self awareness, skill, courage, and urgency.

Atrophy moves quickly, jabs with metaphors as if they are the edges of a broken bottle holding the madness of modern civilization at bay. Tenderness rarely gets a chance to breathe for long before being interrupted. Recurring themes circle and return just in the right moment, throwing the reader a necessary lifeline whenever the storms threaten to be too strong.

This collection is an intense read. It asked me to examine the sharp edges of myself that I don't allow just anyone to see. It asked me to consider where I have been holding back, what begging parts of me I choose to numb rather than allow to boil over in their fullness.

In a time where it is has never been more dizzying to be a sensitive human in a contorted world, Atrophy arrived on my lap to remind me, again, that at some primal level there is so much more going on behind the eyes of every person we meet.

[NR · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.6-5
Got this book from a good friend over a year ago and never even tried to get through the whole thing, since a big part of our friendship had been set around one specific poems - Curbside Dirge - which appears towards the beginning of the compilation. Finally, though, I pulled the book out of my closet and decided to do our friendship some justice by reading Jon's annotated version of Jackson Burgess' poetry.
I must admit that I am not the last person to go for the "faux philosophical, overdone, and egotistic" look on poetry like this, but I really wanted to give Burgess a chance, and honestly he made it work. (With a grain of salt, seeing as he is a 'punching holes in walls, male manipulator, listens to Modern Baseball while drinking 17 Bud Lights and then crushes the cans on his knee' type of dude.) His poems were repetitive but he has enough anecdotes to make them all original, and besides, it's like he sort of wants them to be that way. I mean he won't shut up about Lily the whole book, so I think that's inevitable.
Anyway, they were pretty cool poems for a budding college student (Jon - not me), even if just to analyze in my friend's weirdly statistical way. Nice!

Favorite poems were "Curbside Dirge" (obviously - thanks Jon), "No More Rain, No More Roses", "Past Lives", and "Essay on Tornadoes".

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is hope the thing with feathers or is hope “the thing with teeth you keep locked in the medicine cabinet?” ATROPHY is a book that unlocks the jaws of hope and holds us “there in the lungs of it.” It’s a place where your best chance of surviving a tornado is to be knocked out by a slab of concrete, where cats want nothing more than to be hit by cars, where love offers you avocados and takes the knives away. ATROPHY is at once the most tender, tragic, and hilarious book of poems I’ve ever read. These poems pulse with love, vodka, and the despair of things lost and things found. Jackson Burgess has created a world where we are all “like that octopus that figured out how to open a jar underwater from the inside, and instead of swimming out just sat there, sort of looking around.” Or maybe like me, you already live in that world. Maybe like me, you need these poems, need a book like ATROPHY to convey so intimately what it means to be alive and in love, both the ghost and the haunting. I want to gift ATROPHY to every human I’ve ever met.

[Liz Shine · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a narrative here. The poems are connected by recurring images, such as “bathtub”, “hospital”, and “avocado”. To name a few. The story goes nowhere because it takes time to go anywhere after a break-up, especially when the magnitude of the love outsizes the self. Like any good narrative, it’s more complex than that. The story is also about a young man coping and even trying to grow, in spite of pain. The poems in Atrophy are really lovely in the poem sense of the word. They are real and gritty, not sugar-coated, but they are also lyrical. Burgess, like all good poets, uses words to access metaphoric dreamscapes that may not be logical but always make sense. He moves so deftly between metaphor and moments of real and to me that seemed to mimic the way the first-person speaker is trying to make sense of what sometimes is a senseless world.

[Kaitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been making an effort to read more poetry this year--since I don't actually know much about poetry, it's been a blind struggle. But so far, my picks have swung violently between "life-changingly brilliant" and "pointlessly vapid." This one, unfortunately, falls into the latter category. Evocative language, but the thematic elements were just not doing it for me. Sue me, but I don't like break-up lit.

[Ray Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely stunning, masochistically jarring, relentless. A tornado of a poetry collection for the moments when the heartbreak gets so heavy it feels like a personal fault. A reminder of the LA streets I love and the castaways I loved there. Absolutely the book I needed right now.

[Arturs · Rating 5 out of 5]

good sh*t

[Roy Iacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burgess has a terrific eye and wit about his poetry. Often I found myself stopping at a line and reflecting at how well it captures a mood, a feeling, a moment I have experienced but don't know how to explain. His writing is inventive - there is no moment or style that he clings onto. It always feels authentic.