The Vault

by Andrés Cerpa

The Vault is a quiet and vulnerable sequence of ethereal fragments, letters, and poems that trace a narrative of love and healing in the afterlife of a parental death. Seasons turn and a life is built despite the ruin. Each poem is a music box of prayer, of the decisions made and yet to be made.

Genres: Poetry

89 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2021

About the author

Andrés Cerpa was raised in Staten Island, NY & spent many of his childhood summers in Puerto Rico. A recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony & Cantomundo, his poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Third Coast, TriQuarterly, West Branch, and elsewhere. He holds degrees from the University of Delaware & Rutgers University, Newark. He is a poetry editor for Epiphany Magazine and lives in Brooklyn, NY. His first book, Bicycle in a Ransacked City, will be published in January 2019.

Reviews

[Emily Pérez · Rating 5 out of 5]

On people who bottle up their emotions, my therapist said: Often they leak. Sometimes they explode. A locked box of explosive pain exists within the speaker of Andrés Cerpa’s second collection The Vault, but the explosion never comes. Instead, the two thirty-five-plus page poem sequences, written in spare, double-spaced stanzas, read like leaks, secrets and confessions slipping out from under pressure.

This is a speaker blanketed in trauma so heavy that even when he lifts his head to take a breath, he does so with the understanding that he will soon be submerged again. Many of the poems find him alone, contemplating grief. His self-awareness lends to the tragic tone, for he lacks hope for escape: “despair & I are inventing a word // world by world // marked by a long lifeline & a canyon of darkness what I want to uncover // & bury at once.” Language of burial permeates the book, eventually becoming direct references to “the vault” inside the speaker, a place he longs and fears to excavate.

read more at RHINO: https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/the-v...

[Oscreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

My wig is gone. This shit had me crying.

[Maria]

when I imagine myself

I am always leaving

I couldn’t draw my own face if god asked

- from Join Me

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

will I drown in a water I won't drink

I feel old
like I've only been alive today
I could go on & on about regret but what I retain is not frivolous
compile my youth
letters
the excitement of new drugs
birthmark & the way she slipped through a fence off the highway
the horizon a fortress abandoned except for her eyes
failure I say
as the starlings dart in the last feed before the heavy machinery turns
the water to dusk

I have tamped down the earth & prayed for the vault to open
neglect
all my psychological shit untouched

when I imagine myself
I am always leaving
I couldn't draw my own face if god asked
when I think of the intricate design
glaciers cutting up mountains & how my interior system
seems contrary to the world

I experience the world in dramatic fractions

The vault I'm trying to enter
tastes like ocean
& hides another sky.

[Ximena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came across this book in a review in Caesura, which reviewed positively another Alice James poet (whose recent book I loved and is truly an original, stunning work). The review in Caesura, however, for Cerpa's was very harsh, but having loved the other Alice James book, I decided to check it out for myself. While I really wanted to give this book a chance, I have read better poetry in my undergrad poetry workshops. It's very trite and very unaware of how trite it is, and as the reviewer noted, overall predictable, bland and expected. I saw Cerpa read online recently and he seems like a really nice person but I'd look elsewhere for better poetry.

[Mikayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really don't know how to feel after just finishing this book. Cerpa's writing was full of anger, desperation, desolation, yearning, and desire. His lyricism, while requiring a bit to accumulate to, pulls at your heart strings. The journey portrayed through this book was simply hauntingly gorgeous, and I'm still reeling. I did read most of the poems out loud to better interpret them, and once I connected the main metaphors the second half of the book flew by. Amazing.

[Marian P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andres Cerpa’s second book The Vault is a collection of poems, some of which are letter fragments on grief, loss, and pain caused by the death of a parent. There are two sections of poems both of which deal with the manifestations of grief. The poignant, lyrical writing shatters you.

Here are some of favorite passages from the collection:

“Despair and I are inventing a word
world by world
Marked by a long life-line & canyon
of darkness” (5)


“I’ve hurt for such little comfort
Like a bird’s first test of the glass.” (11)


“The days slip by in a slime of grief
The way in Amsterdam
three days into a bender” (15)


“I have tamped down the earth
& prayed for the vault to open
neglect
all my psychological shit untouched”(29)

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page by page, line by line, and sometimes even word by word, these poems feel fragmented to me, searching, the way grief—which is what I think this book is about—can make you feel splintered and wandering.

[Rolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of poems, most addressed to someone-my favorites were the ones addressed to his dad.

[claire smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

i finished this and an hour later i received news that my great grandmother had passed. something in this primed me for the loss. but cerpa was right, nothing new can save me from grief.

[Jeremy Clemente · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally forgettable and blended together but with a few pages that were rly rly breathtaking