This Alaska

by Carlie Hoffman

To live in an Alaska of the mind is to map the imagined cartography of winter on all that is physical. To dwell perpetually in a symbolic cold, and to emerge, with grace, unscathed. This book questions what it means to live and love in such a buried season. This Alaska interrogates all that emotional and physical intimacy cannot salvage or keep warm. Death and dreams are at the very center of this book. But life — and all it entails and circles and loses and loves — is at its heart.

Genres: Poetry

76 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2021

Reviews

[Richard S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up at Black Spring Books in Brooklyn today, it was signed, I liked the cover, and the sample poem I read up really seemed to work. As usual, being the shortest book in the stack, it was the first one I picked out, and I read the whole thing through a couple of times. I knew nothing about the author until I read the credits at the end.

First - Hoffman has a wonderful sense of imagery and I simply love the tone of the book, the way the poems read, and how they speak to me, their cadence and beauty. The poetry is broken into 3 sections with a blank page between them - the name of the second poem in the first two section is both "Alaska" and the name of the first poem in the third section is "Postcard from Alaska" - although the poems in the last section are more New York-focused than the first two.

Here's a great excerpt from the first section, which really captures the best of the wonderful cadence and rhythm she achieves, without breaking too much away in terms of sense:

"To suck meat from crabs legs,
peel out the eyes for otters,
place the shells carefully

into the yellow bucket.
To speak as though nothing
and everything were crucial,

as though the wish for two souls
like gull returning to rock
were possible, night workers swarming

the dock, reeking of fishwater."

I really enjoyed in particular the complete lack of artificiality. Every word seems perfect and placed just right. And not everything is light, she has very meaty poems like "Wishbone" after more light poems like "Hunting Lesson" so there's enough variety to carry you through.

Unfortunately the last section in poems like "Central Park Zoo" and "Night Drive with my Brother" the book changes its tone and focus to the concrete rather than the "airy" - it adds a bit of a sour note to the book as a whole, in fact the last third seems a bit patched together, more like remnants than the first two sections, which held together very well. Frankly the descriptions of Alaska were much more wild and interesting (such as the excerpt above) than anything happened in the "48" (although the opening poem of the book set in New Jersey is one of the best). If the book had stayed focused on Alaska and explored that more (even with the more concrete themes of the third section), it would have been truly amazing.

But still, for poetry full of everything I personally like it really can't be beat, and it was a great pick-up. Recommended to all, especially those who feel poetry being written today is too "difficult," and want something more relatable, and yet poetry that is beautiful.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

An oil slick of a book: Slim, obsessive in how it spreads its imagery and weather (the seasons, particularly winter, mark these poems), and lines devastatingly truthful. The realizations appear like trying to wipe the stain away: how the floor gets cleaner but is still marked by life, by existence and deep observation.

[Nuha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book of poems that explores the limits of dreamscapes.

[G]

The stinging cut of death is on every corner of this poetry collection, but vivid imagery compelled me to keep turning the pages.

"A prayer that someday she can use this,
that somehow, in the middle, she will wake
styled in the fire and wet light of winter stars,
deciding to begin."

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how the story in these poems unfolds, spiral-like, inward and outward, fragmentary and echoing, and how the poems form an inner and outer landscape without veering into the purely metaphorical, or rather, any metaphorical readings are left up in the air. The poems' intimate rootedness is evoked by the speaker's lyrical voice combined with a clear sense of place. "*this* alaska" indeed!