If Men, Then: Poems

by Eliza Griswold

A darkly humorous new collection of poems by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Wideawake Field and Amity and Prosperity

If Men, Then, Eliza Griswold’s second poetry collection, charts a radical spiritual journey through catastrophe. Griswold’s language is forthright and intimate as she steers between the chaos of a tumultuous inner world and an external landscape littered with SUVs, CBD oil, and go bags, talismans of our time. Alternately searing and hopeful, funny and fraught, the poems explore the world’s fracturing through the collapse of the ego, embodied in a character named “I”—a soul attempting to wrestle with itself in the face of an unfolding tragedy.

Genres: Poetry, Audiobook

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 11, 2020

About the author

Eliza Griswold is an American journalist and poet. She was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

(wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau]

So much of who we perceive ourselves to be is based on the connections we make with others. Eliza Griswold shows us how we often forget (contextually) the web of connectivity we are caught in with everyone else; and how very fragile that web is. The problem is that we fail to see this connectivity until it is too late. This book of poems elegantly addresses this problem.

[Nadine in NY Jones]

The opening poems were very strong and emotional: 

Prayer
What can we offer the child
at the border: a river of shoes,
her coat stitched with coins,
her father killed for his teeth,
her mother, sewing her
daughter’s future into a hem.

Alone, but for a brother who shoves her
ahead through the barbed-wire fence,
knowing she’s safer without him —
a truth she cannot yet fathom,
being too young for the ways of men.

Nothing is what we can offer.
The child died years ago.
Except practice a finer caliber of kindness
to the stranger rather than wield
this burden of self, this harriedness.
Humility involves less us.

... but I found things tailed off a bit after that.  Many poems require context that I don't have, one poem is just a series of snippets from a book of Libyan proverbs. some feel like they were just dashed off in the moment while Griswold was touring someplace. 

Snow in Rome
on the synagogue’s dome, the palms, the pines,
the travertine spine of Aurelian wall
against which our transgressions pile:
We gossiped we snubbed a dinner guest.
So much for self-awareness;
all walls speak of weakness,
the need to mount defense.
This one’s marred by cannonballs,
scarified by trilobites embedded
in its stone.  Their shells are gone.
What’s left is what’s missing.  A fossil is
a negative.  We hate being human,
depleted by absence. Once
I had the sense to hold herself apart.

[Amy Layton]

Who knew that poetry and politics could coincide?  Told through the acknowledgement of both devastating political events as well as thruogh a character named "I", Griswold creates a world that is somehow both true and false--the place between fiction and non-fiction.  It works out enormously well, and she has been able to combine these genres as well as topics in ways that I didn't even know was possible.  Overall, a beautiful, fresh take at what poetry is and what it could be.

Review cross-listed here!

[disco]

The Gaia hypothesis holds that the earth
is a body possessing the means to rid itself
of aggressors and malignancies.

[Kyra Grimes]

not sure if the book didn’t understand me or if I didn’t understand the book

[Emma]

I clicked with the first few poems in If Men, Then but spent the rest of the collection hoping to get that feeling back. Griswold's poems are full of Classics references -- most of which I could identify as references but lacked the context to make meaning of. A knowledge of these texts most likely would have made this collection much more enjoyable.

We've hurtled toward disaster
to practice moving faster
than regular living allows.

- from 'On Wearing a Tracking Device'

[Ed Meek]

The intersection of style and content in poetry can be powerful and effective — a way poets can help their readers find order amid the chaos of our current era, to paraphrase Robert Frost. The trick is to arrive at the right balance of aesthetic and content. In art, the aesthetic must come first. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold” is, after all, prose. The line works because it builds on an opening metaphor. And because the statement’s succinctness reverberates with us (still) in an age of “alternative facts” and “truthiness” — when any general pronouncement is suspect. Eliza Griswold walks this tightrope, sometimes successfully, other times, not. But because her poems often take place in war zones, she’s always provocative — even when she is tendentious.

If Men Then is Griswold’s third book of poetry. She is well-known for her nonfiction. Her book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction this year. She has also written about Afghanistan, The Kurds, Christianity and Islam, Ethiopia, etc. In short, she is a very interesting, and engaged, person.
Here’s a short poem of hers called “Reflection” that appeared in The New Yorker:

I is a lion
who snarls
at the lion
in the water
who snarls.

How’s that for a fresh perspective? In just a few lines it captures an empowered woman’s point of view yet, though she snarls, she snarls at her own image. It’s kind of an anti-narcissus poem. She is no flower. The use of the first person to explore a split identity fits these self-involved times of ours. Just be yourself, we are told, an army of one, take the journey of self-discovery (along with countless other invitations for omphaloskepsis). Is it any surprise that many of us today feel a certain sense of dislocation? Griswold examines this perspective in a number of poems. Here is another short one entitled “Green”:

I shouldered her hobo sorrow and soldiered on.
She was warden of an angry garden,
guarding against what hoped to grow.
The bitter bud that never opens hardens.

“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?” asked Antonio Machado. Griswold answers the question, again capturing our Weltanshauung. We are all a little angry these days, just ask Elizabeth Warren. The poetry here is dense, alliterative, and assonant, with internal and end-stopped rhymes. The aesthetic reinforces the content.
Griswold opens the book with a “Prayer”:

What can we offer the child
at the border: a river of shoes,
her coat stitched with coins,
her father killed for his teeth,
her mother, sewing her
daughter’s future into a hem.

In this poem Griswold takes on the heart-wrenching problem of undocumented children crossing the border. The problems immigrants encounter here in the U.S., and in other nations around in the world, is an increasingly tragic concern. In some ways, poetry, making use of imagery and metaphor, is able to express more of the despair than newspaper reports. Here is the last stanza:

Nothing is what we can offer.
The child died years ago.
Except practice a finer caliber of kindness
to the stranger rather than wield
this burden of self, this harriedness.
The process of humility involves less us.

Griswold’s point of view rings true, but in the last line she has crossed a Rubicon from poetry into statement. She is telling us directly how we should feel and, because of that, the verse becomes less effective.

Another poem “Good-bye Mullah Omar,” takes place in Afghanistan. It begins: “Charlie says when Afghan men get together, / the number of eyes is always odd.” Griswold’s unique perspective — because she has lived in a place so few of us will ever go — combines reporting with a poet’s eye. And that makes her perspective very compelling. Although, when she ends the poem with the question (“Where are your scars now, wonderboys?”) the devolution into prose pops up again.
“Ruins” manages to balance on the tightrope pretty well.

A spring day comes through Trastevere.
A nun in turquoise sneakers
contemplates the stairs.
Every hard bulb stirs.
The egg in our chest cracks
against our will.
The dead man on the Congo road
was missing an ear,
which had been eaten
or someone was wearing
it around his neck.
The dead man looked like this, no, that.
Here’s a flock of tourists
In matching canvas hats.
We’re healing by mistake.
Rome is also built on ruins.

In this poem, Griswold puts her finger on a number of the problems of our time. The disparities between the rich tourists and the poor immigrants, the endemic violence in certain regions, our attempts to take it all in. The end-stopped rhymes and clashing images evoke a sense of disconnection. Once again, the poem ends better in the penultimate line.

The title If Men, Then is a response to the Wallace Stevens poem “Metaphors of a Magnifico,” which begins: “Twenty men crossing a bridge/ Into a village/ Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges / Into twenty villages.” The first poem in Griswold’s book, “Prelude to a Massacre,” starts “Twenty men crossing a bridge, / into a village, / is not a metaphor/ but prelude to a massacre.” Griswold is pointing out that, in Afghanistan, metaphors have little to do with survival in a multi-generational war.

Not all is earnest here, but Griswold’s sense of humor is uneven — it comes across most successfully in “Reflection.” She includes a sequence of poems about Italy that are not as involving as those set in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, If Men, Then is well worth reading by those who believe that poetry has something to tell us about our many internal and external conflicts.

[Jennifer]

It has such a helicopter view of time and place that I am sure about 95% of the references went over my head and most of the time it felt like I was reading a different language, but at the same time one of the most engaging parts of this collection was the transition back and forth between the expansive world and the individual. More for the regular poetry reader or someone who a solid foundation of world history than the casual dipper inner and outer.

[Rhiley Jade]

3.5/5 stars!
The first piece in this collection is one of my new favorite poems. After finishing it, I had to take a steadying breath because the words resonated with me so deeply. I assumed I'd love all of the other pieces just as much, but unfortunately not all of them were up to par. Debated giving it 4/5 stars, but I found that a few of the poems were more information than poetry, so I couldn't justify giving it 4 stars.
Definitely recommend though!

[Emma]

"Nothing is what we can offer.
The child died years ago.
Except practice a finer caliber of kindness
to the stranger rather than wield
this burden of self, this harriedness.
Humility involves less us."

[Ran]

3-3.5 stars

[C.L. Phillips]

A good collection of poems with insight into another culture. Shows me the world from perspective I can never truly understand.

[Katrina]

I liked the Greek mythology poems the most, and "Tree" was really nice.

[Laura]

“The dead man looked like this, no, that. / Here’s a flock of tourists / in matching canvas hats. / We’re healing by mistake. / Rome is also built on ruins.”

[lia]

2.5 ☹️

[wormy ♡]

"long ago, a girl could become a tree.
root hairs branched from her toes,
her torqued curls gnarled into limbs.
she thickened, as we do,
in this age of self-defense."

[Luke Gorham]

2 1/2. Reference-heavy poetry that probably necessitates more context that I afforded it, but I would have cared more to do the work if the writing were up to par. And this tension between antiquity and modernity that Griswold so considers profound is ultimately undone by her own bluntness - including the phrase "Fake News" in a poem set in Ancient Greece isn't all that interesting, sorry.

[Mary Catherine]

I so badly wanted to enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t for me. I find it just wrong to rate poetry because there is no good or bad poetry so this rating is not how beautifully the author strung her sentences together nor how poor she wrote, it’s just to say this book wasn’t one that worked for me.

[hiaa123]

I find it difficult to find poetry that I can really savour but I thoroughly enjoyed Griswold's collection. I find poetry about war, antiquity, and myths to be particularly resonant. Griswold's writing is engaging, sharp, and intricate. I am interested in seeking out some of her articles to learn more about her experiences as a journalist.

Here are some lines I particularly connected with at this time:

"We turn to the wisdom of elsewhere.
In the bookstore, we find
Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
shelved in Current Events."

WHAT IF THE APOCALYPSE WERE SUDDEN
"We have watched the end begin
in distant lands, and when
it comes it comes as threads
of smoke rising in the horizon,
for days, years even...
...It seems too much till
one day it's no metaphor. We wake
to the snap of a black flag over the door"

[Leonard]

Eliza Griswold has written some unforgettable books including "I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan" which I've read more than once, and The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam," which I should read again. This is another fine collection of poems covering a wide range of locations and subjects. The titles give you a hint of what she writes about: "Prelude to a Massacre " "Friday Afternoon with Boko Haram," "Early Middle Ages," as well as an ode to Kim Wall. With frugal lines and grim images the reader sees her memory or vision, and can only want more.

[Ellen]

I listened to this as an audio book, and as a bed time story. It was read by the author, and there is something about hearing a poem in a way that the author thought it should be read. The poems deal with some dark themes--war, refugees, struggle, but they are tinged with hope. Though in these dark times I find some solace in poetry working through difficult ideas. I would like to revisit this book in printed form.

[G]

I don’t know why but the framing of this book and yet it’s extremely limited focus bothered me? the complete lack of analysis of settler colonialism in a series of poems that contends with Afghanistan, the DRC and Greek myth really irritates. while this is obviously based on the author’s subjectivity and experiences as a reporter, the hypocrisy of the words “inherited America” stings in a poetry collection centered on how men have ruined the world.

[Shannon]

I know poetry is mostly subjective but—girl WHAT were you even talking about?? I felt like most of the content here was trying too hard to make a meaningful statement about war that it completely lost the essence of what poetry often seeks to reveal. In other words, these entries would have been better off as perhaps a nonfiction collection of stories.

Just not my cup of tea when it comes to reading poetry.

[Mara]

This collection is divided into four sections. Section Three was my favorite. I liked the poems "Apotheosis," "Slough," and "Toward a New Year" best.

"all walls speak of weakness,
the need to mount defense." --from "Snow in Rome"

"A being
is nothing other than what lingers." --from "Ode to Thucydides"

[maya strong]

"long ago, a girl could become a tree. root hairs branched, her torque curls gnarled into limbs. she thickened, as we do, in this age of self defense."

very reference heavy, requires a lot of political context but super interesting. very poetic take on the consequences of war and the slip the real world takes into dystopia

[James]

Griswold is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who also compiled an anthology of poems by Afghan women. That experience influences her poems about surviving the world of violence and pollution and finding one's own way. Smart and hopeful but not saccharine, a strong collection.

[Sami]

I read “Tenth Parallel” a decade ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t connect that this was the same author until midway through, though I knew the name from somewhere. I was not a fan of Griswold’s poetry though I think the mission of making the political artistic is an important one.

[Morgan]

Personal taste. I enjoyed some of the poems, but overall this book didn't really connect with me.

[Ashley]

This took me all around the world, through time, and then brought me home once again. I would love to read more of her poetry!

[Karmen]

Brilliant. Poignant & heartbreaking without ever becoming sentimental. A book to keep & re-read.