Isn't Forever

by Amy Key

Amy Key's Isn't Forever is a spell book for feminine selfhood in a world where a sense of self is flimsy, elusive and unrequited. The poems in this book are obsessive in their desire to construct and breach the terms of their own intimacy. The poems have their own `narrative costume' but are vexed with it, not quite able to master the 'diligence of having a body'. This is a book where a tender and sabotaging shame of aloneness has taken root. Where wants cluster and are at war with each other. Where the heart is at once 'all lurgy' and an 'investment piece' to be saved for best. Where the sea is the only solace, but the sea is blase. The `ta-dah!' and candour of these poems is an exercise in Amy Key's imaginative protection and urge for personal extravaganza, an attempt to acknowledge but fight back the brutal inner voice. The obscure audience of the reader is never out of sight. Amy Key's first collection Luxe was published by Salt in 2013. Isn't Forever, her second book-length collection, is a Poetry Book Society Wildcard Choice.

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2018

About the author

Amy Key is a poet and writer based in London. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Luxe and Isn't Forever, which was a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice and a Book of the Year in the Guardian, New Statesman and The Times. Her poems have been widely published and anthologised, and her essays have appeared in At the Pond, Granta, the Poetry Review and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Amy (Other Amy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had invented the woman
(Yves Saint Laurent)

Never confuse aesthetic ghosts with the people you love.
Betrayal fades, loneliness is eternal. I am no longer concerned
with beauty, but with physical strength. Physical strength
is an unworn sensation. Over the years I have learned to create
a scandal -- terrible joy, a heaven of tranquilizers. I wish I had
known the indulgence of close contact with life; the encounter
of day for night. I have hunted down the false friendship
of the sun, sober. I emerged from solitude with many things,
spectacular concepts, all out of breath. The sea an extraordinary
denim. It's a love story of everything I didn't have.

If you are craving a sonnet, this will not be the book for you. This is all free verse, collage poems and the like. It admittedly indulges in some of free verse's worst indiscretions. (The very first poem in the book is printed in a perfect block of text with slashes where the line breaks should be. I glared at it very sternly and was relieved to find that that particular shenanigan was not often repeated.) And there are some very uneven works here. I want you to be aware of that. That said? I love what I love. You have but to say, "Betrayal fades. Loneliness is eternal" once, poem, and I am yours. There are many such moments, many such poems. This one is a keeper.

[Isobel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Amy Key and I love this collection of poems. They alternate between being lonely, bold, playful, shameful, unashamed; sometimes combinations of all of these things.

Some of the images are so lovely I felt overwhelmed e.g. ‘when someone / on a bicycle bumps into a friend on a bicycle / and they try to hug without getting off their bicycles’ — this image is followed shortly by a more shocking one: ‘unrequited love for Zelda Fitzgerald, who died / in a fire while awaiting electroshock therapy. / Nine women, including Zelda, died that day.’ They seem to lower you in to nostalgic dreams and lull you with peace only to jolt you awake.

Having read the collection through once it feels only the surface has been scratched, so I’ll definitely be reading over and over.

[mcleodchick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Singing is only permitted in the dark. Delphine is judging her own obedience. Look at me being strict! But she has to remind herself of the rules, hourly. Deceit is its own discipline."

i really enjoyed this collection. some bits felt like i had written them myself which only made it more relatable. a lot of feminist themes which were very interesting to read. i really recommend it. i cant give it five stars because like most poetry collections there are some shit ones jammed in there, but all in all they went really well together making the book enjoyable.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Some things become more beautiful in their abandonment but not me.” Amy Key’s second poetry collection, Isn’t Forever, is living proof that I wasted the last three years of my life, in which I could have bought + read an almost-criminally good book of poems, and meant to many times, and just kept… not doing that? The poems in Isn’t Forever hit home with me in the most specific, way, like dozens of little shivs finding the sweet spot between ribs to really get in at my stupid little heart. ‘Lousy with unfuckedness, I dream’ is such a perfect opener, and sets the tone for a collection so consumed with questions of an unstable self, an identity and a body in need of solidifying by the external, too unpredictable world. “I am building up evidence. Some bodily. Some constructed.” I love Delphine, the recurring figure; the references to Kate Bush (especially in ‘Stem of wallflower / Hair of doormat’); “the uncut / diamonds of future peril”, and all other gorgeously constructed images; and poems like ‘Super Try Again’, whose vision of support is galvanising and moving. Elsewhere there is the edict to “Take a self-appreciation holiday. Build a fortress / around your best self. When you hear your worst / selves yelling from the ornamental moat of your / self-esteem, ghost them.” Key sees the heart, “permanently gory”, and knows “a desire / to be a witness and be witnessed”; her sharp self-awareness lets her lay herself bare, and the reader in her image.

[Kayleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take a self-appreciation holiday. Build a fortress
around your best self. When you hear your worst
selves yelling from the ornamental moat of your
self-esteem, ghost them. No to selves that nibble
away like mice in the circuitry of your dreams! No
to selves that regurgitate Issues like it will nourish
you to eat them! Sabotage is often disguised.

Lots of the poems in this collection left me cold, but there were a few that were full of gorgeous ideas and evocative imagery, and I'll be thinking about them for a while. My favourites were Haunted, Small pebbles, She lacks confidence... (from which the quote above comes), Delphine is having a mani-pedi, and The garden.

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to the fashion and textile-inspired imagery and the way these poems explore a sense of self and identity. I also love the vulnerability of the speakers in these poems as well as the sea imagery and intriguing use of found language. This is a collection that makes readers feel less alone in this world.

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collages are really interesting

[Catherine Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this collection. The poet has her own unique style which I really enjoyed. A collection that you want to read many times over.

[Bat 🦇 · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 ⭐️

[Olga Rojas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ta bien
Osea no soy muy pro de la poesía así post post modernista que desestructura todo.
I guess para entender todo bien tienes que saber mucho insight

[chase lauren · Rating 1 out of 5]

this kind of poetry just isn’t my jam.