Elsewhere, That Small

by Monica Berlin

What People Are Saying <!--/h3--> Sit and stay a while in the strangely familiar rooms and landscapes that Monica Berlin’s Elsewhere, That Small constructs for us. Let Berlin stop the clock, just for a few seconds, so we can take stock of “the ordinary seen & seen / -through” of our a doorframe warped by humidity or an over-pruned tree. Here, we weather cycles of loss and recovery; here, we dwell in the contrary senses of belonging and longing to be elsewhere . Berlin’s beautifully structured and incisive poems ask us to face—and to marvel at—the brute force of the world’s ongoingness. More so, Elsewhere, That Small offers a lesson on how to region here—that is, how to accept, how to endure—as Berlin writes, “Maybe / the only way to understand emptiness / to live in it.” — Emily Rosko The contingency in Elsewhere, That Small is embodied by the sonnet form, its propensity to turn from abstract to concrete, map to memory “heavy-shaded by green.” It’s in the rhythm of Monica Berlin’s language, in iambs that sometimes strike in a clear pattern sturdy as a chair back before shifting “like some trick of maybe.” And what is contingent in the form is inescapable in the fact of our being human. In these poems, we occupy spaces, patches of ground and perspectives that we may be so bold as to call our own. What a gift to be reminded of the view from where we’re standing, and how fleeting it is when the time comes to “So I’ll give / it up again, say instead yours.” — Beth McDermott This sequence of poems makes me consider the solitary expanse of the sonnet, how the span of fourteen lines opens up a zone through which a thought can travel nimbly its avenues. Intimate, contemplative, seeking out the smallest folds of language, Berlin’s verse leads us through estrangements and dismantlings, whose phrases disclose their “beautiful, hardness, their sharp edges & / sharper heave of near-careless care.” This book makes palpable a certain kind of nearness, an almost, an about-to-rise, like orchestral instruments tuning up. Reader, bring your listening. — Carolina Ebeid MONICA BERLIN is the author of Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live , winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open; No Shape Bends the River So Long , a collaboration with Beth Marzoni, and winner of the New Measure Poetry Prize; and the chapbooks From Maybe to Region, Your Small Towns of Adult Sorrow and Melancholy , and with Marzoni, Dear So and So . A professor at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, she currently serves as associate director of the Program in Creative Writing.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published January 25, 2020

Reviews

[Lisa Preston-H · Rating 5 out of 5]

From my favorite poem in the book “Because the weeks limp by—every limb heavy”:
“& then / time would be enough, & I’m turning / pages to try to find someday / in the atlas, that map called room.”

I love the overlay throughout the collection of regions, familiar yet changing spaces through life, of what we see and how it changes. Always a fan of Berlin’s work!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

23/31
A Galesburg poet. Always makes me happy. Some that stood out:

"Always as if on Cue, the Trains"
"So Maybe to Region Here Means Without"
"Nearly Finished Now, the Building Becomes"
"This Morning a Ladder"
"Today the Road on the Bridge Painted"
"Almost Summer a Wide Porch"
"How the Journal of Memory Forgot to Vote"

[Max Potthoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

"beautiful, hardness, their sharp edges & / sharper heave of near-careless care. That / slope & sheathing, every valley, those hips / & ridge & rake & slope: they call it a field."

[Rachel Swearingen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly gorgeous, and written with such precision. Monica Berlin writes about weather and region, memory and time, and perception and grief in a way no one else can. Elsewhere, That Small is such a gift.