Second Story: Poems

by Denise Duhamel

When her Florida apartment is damaged by the ferocity of Hurricane Irma, Duhamel turns to Dante and terza rima, reconstructing the form into the long poem “Terza Irma.” Throughout the book she investigates our near-catastrophic ecological and political moment, hyperaware of her own complicity, resistance, and agency. She writes odes to her favorite uncle—who was “green” before it was a hashtag—and Mother Nature via a retro margarine commercial. She writes letters to her failing memory as well as to America’s amnesia. With fear of the water below and a burglar who enters through her second story window, she bravely faces the story under the story, the second story we often neglect to tell.

Genres: Poetry

110 pages, Paperback

Published March 9, 2021

About the author

Denise Duhamel's most recent books are Ka-Ching! (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005), Mille et un Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005); Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001); The Star-Spangled Banner (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and Kinky (Orchises Press, 1997). A bilingual edition of her poems, Afortunada de mí (Lucky Me), translated into Spanish by Dagmar Buchholz and David Gonzalez, came out in 2008 with Bartleby Editores (Madrid.) A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she is an associate professor at Florida International University in Miami.

Reviews

[Paige Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great wordplay about the irony of activism, circular connections to consumerist compassion, the humbling power of loss and death. Near drownings, a WalMart afterlife, clever rhymes about strippers. I learned gratuities started when restaurants were forced to hire blacks, so the employer passed the bill onto tables. And also that Kris Jenner still gets her period!

There’re many references that are too personal or era-specific for me. Some things I’ve always enjoyed about Duhamel’s writing are the springy femininity and the humor found in the most dour subjects. Even if you don’t exactly agree with her causes, you never come out frowning because she has a thoughtful, respectable disposition when it comes to politics than, say, Twitter-tainted 20-somethings who speak in all caps but have truly contemplated little.

There’s also a sexiness to plenty of the poems inspired by Tindr-esque ads and America’s PornHub culture. The second section of the book reads as a blow-by-blow w/ great form about a hurricane pummeling her Miami condo. We experience the long and costly evacuation with her. Despite the state of emergency, she seems to escape pre-storm on edge but in style: luxury Airbnbs, abundant snacks, reassuring friends. What she returns to is most memorable for its gaping silver fish flopped on a penthouse and sand-blasted everythings.

I just don’t get how her bed is not wet and she straightaway has water, TV, electricity when she was feet away from the beach. I’d also like to know more about the state of the floors, someone she knows who was way more effected. What the rent and insurance situations and week before warnings were like.

The third section has a denser hodgepodge of political and ode poems to addresses and people past. It’s a nice insight to dealing w/ cruel and suicidal lovers, a meshing of old and new liberalism (therein we get the unexpected explanation of the title), and there’s a dusting of Covid talk. The line work is always impressive, whether inverting refrains or perfect enjambment.

[Francescajemm · Rating 5 out of 5]

These. Are. Wonderful.