Everything

by Andrea Cohen

The poems in Everything, Andrea Cohen’s seventh collection, traffic in wonder and woe, in dialogue and interior speculation. Humor and gravity go hand in hand here. Cohen’s poems have the rueful irony of a stand-up comic playing to an empty room. But look there are wrecking balls, zebras, lovers, milk money. It’s a room to hang around in.

Genres: Poetry

135 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2021

About the author

Andrea Cohen writes and swims in Watertown, MA. Her heroes have swum Venetian canals, the Chattahoochee, and The English Channel. Her poems and stories have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, etc. Her fourth poetry collection, Furs Not Mine, will be published by Four Way Books. Other collections include Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry 2011), Long Division (Salmon Poetry 2009), and The Cartographer's Vacation (Owl Creek Press 1999).

She has received a PEN Discovery Award, Glimmer Train's Short Fiction Award, the Owl Creek Poetry Prize and several fellowships at The MacDowell Colony. She directs the Writers House at Merrimack College and the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.

Reviews

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Went to her reading at McNally Jackson with Tori and had to pick this up! Absolutely loved, devoured!!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing stood out in terms of being deeply impactful to me. Another critique I had was that a number of the poems were extremely short, like a total of less than five words. Which made them feel less like a poem and more like a wandering thought that went nowhere.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short poems because COVID made me so tired. Many little gems in here--but just as many that missed me entirely.

[Steven Critelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything (2021), Ms. Cohen's latest delivery of wit, whimsy, and truths small and large, is a somewhat less ambitious, as least as I conceive it, than Furs Not Mine and Unfathoming, which contain many of her masterworks.

At 110 pages of poetry, there is a full plate here, made digestible by virtue of the small bites and lighter fare. Though she is known for her concise expression and the lightning pole of her wit, Everything is notable for the haiku-like effect of most of the poems. For instance, in "Bible Study":

How does a five-
year-old learn

to play dead?
Under what

sun can she
unlearn it.

"Openings" is an example of the zen-like discourse that runs through Everything:

Eternity has closed its doors─
good riddance! I didn't want

forever forever─just this
pear tree, branches

backlit and the fruits
I can't get to.

Ms. Cohen published a few such nuggets in Unfathoming (2017) and made them a significant part of her previous work, Nightshade (2019), though typical servings, just as tasteful, tended to predominate in that volume. Whether it is a sign of the current market, or the short attention span of the always-on-the-go poetry audience, she has decided to make these creations the tapas of her newest serving. Getting hungry? Allors, allons y chez Cohen!

The volume is arranged in four parts and part iii features longer, typically-sized poems of a page or page and a half (she rarely goes beyond three pages in any volume), so that we can appreciate the merit of her longer meditations, against which some of the shorter poems would seem slight if not for the poet's penetrating intelligence. While I would not be so presumptuous as to name an overarching theme, since Everything spans many subjects and situations, the poet returns, naturally, to the subjects of mortality and age from different perspectives. In all, what she has written here is good food for the soul.

[Jed Kudrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so impressed by the way that she is able to pack so much of a punch, in several of these poems, in such a short space. The ability to produce so much emotional feelings out of someone just from a title and two lines is insane for me to try to wrap my head around. Some of them, too, I thought were very humorous, which I found funny in its own right as there's a wide range of genres being written about in these poems, too. A lot of them either made no sense to me or were just alright, but a lot of poetry is subjective - I related to some of these poems and loved them that my classmate didn't. The only real grievance I would have is that the two lines and then a break regardless of where she is in the sentence made the poem harder to read - I eventually got the hang of it, but the first section or two, it was confusing and did not seem logical to me.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of witty, mostly short poems, usually unrhymed couplets, about aging, grief and nostalgia. Some are just a wisp of an idea (as in Guide to Becoming a Human Shield, which is simply

Live
near
spears.

others play with words in clever but ambiguous ways; the poem

Everyone insists
a pendulum swings–

it does, but it
hurts when

it hits you.

makes more sense in light of the title's political reference (Swing State). But the longer poems are the best - a standout is Eleventh, in which the narrator moves an aging father into the apartment in which he will die. (A mentor of mine once told me, "Read poetry. More than you think I should." It never feels like wasted time.)

[Seri · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars! A few hauntingly strong poems mixed in with several that were either so short or specific in their niche interests (which are outside of mine) that they didn't resonate, but I'm glad I had the chance to pick it up from the library! One or two poems will be added to my pile of poems I like to re-read, but overall it was a quick (23 minutes, actually) read and while it was a lovely treat, I worry I'll forget most of the experience by this afternoon.

[Bill Glose · Rating 2 out of 5]

The tiny scraps of poems that make up this collection read like a gathering of fortune cookie sentiments. One example, "Shadowboxer's Complaint," reads: "Shadows don't / fight fair." That's it. That's the entire poem. Most of the others likewise left me feeling as if I were reading scribbles of ideas for poems that had never been developed.

[Jacob Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Liz Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of twelve finalists for the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s 2022 Poetry Prize. No spoilers until the prize is announced in October 2022!

[Tori Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

favorite poems:
Epicenter
No Moon, But
Domestic
One-Two
In the Car with the Theoretical Physicist
Protocol
Bearer
After the End
Beating a Dead Horse
Bell

[Ann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really not super enjoyable. I found a few phrases quite interesting/arresting/beautiful. Almost DNF.

[Carla]

Andrea Cohen is one of my favorites. And this book delivers one razor-sharp poem after another.