The Naomi Letters

by Rachel Mennies

Rachel Mennies embraces the public/private duality of writing letters in her latest collection of poems. Told through a time-honored epistolary narrative, The Naomi Letters chronicles the relationship between a woman speaker and Naomi, the woman she loves. Set mostly over the span of a single year encompassing the 2016 Presidential Election and its aftermath, their love story unfolds via correspondence, capturing the letters the speaker sends to Naomi―and occasionally Naomi’s responses, as filtered through the speaker’s retelling. These letter-poems form a braid, first from the use of found texts, next from the speaker’s personal observations about her bisexuality, Judaism, and mental illness, and lastly from her testimonies of past experiences. As the speaker discovers she has fallen in love with Naomi, her letters reveal the struggles, joys, and erasures she endures as she becomes reacquainted with her own body following a long period of anxiety and suicidal ideation, working to recover both physically and emotionally as she grows to understand this long-distance love and its stakes―a love held by a woman for a woman, forever at a short, but precarious distance.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Jewish, Nonfiction, Lesbian, Queer Lit

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 2021

About the author

Rachel Mennies is the author of The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021) and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press, 2014), winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her poems and essays have been published at The Believer, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. She serves as the book reviews editor for AGNI and the series editor, since 2016, of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mennies currently lives in Chicago, where she works as a writer, editor, and adjunct professor.

Reviews

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lonely / hungry.

Beautiful.

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

”How do I look away now that I have seen you?”

[Marith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman writes letters (mostly love letters) to Naomi over the course of a couple years. It deals with love, grief, depression, bisexuality, and womanhood. The format being letters makes it feel very intimate and I really enjoyed reading it.

Its just over 100 pages of poems and so it's a very fast read. It look me a little longer (still only a couple hours) because I was writing tabs as I read to mark my fave poems/lines and why I liked them which was just for funsies.

If you like poems then I def recommend.

[Deedi Brown (DeediReads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

Thank you to BOA Editions and Rachel Mennies for sending a copy of this collection my way — I loved it. I picked it up and after only a few pages found myself completely immersed; I read the whole thing over the course of just a few hours. And what a journey.

The Naomi Letters is a collection of poems-as-letters written by the narrator to the woman she loves, Naomi. They’re separated by distance, and over the course of a year’s time, we watch the narrator ride down deep into depression (TW: suicidal thoughts), and then come back up and out a bit. Throughout, Naomi is her muse, her despair, her hope, her mirror.

There are so many layers at play here, and so many themes carefully explored. Sexuality, of course. Discomfort in and with one’s body, from both conventional beauty standards and also not knowing or admitting your own desire. Judaism. Depression and anxiety. Hope and healing.

It does get quite heavy, but there’s light at the end of its tunnel, too. It feels emotional and real and human. And along the way, the words are artwork. What more do we want than that?



CONTENT WARNINGS:
Suicidal thoughts and attempt; Severe depression; Body hatred

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was just beautiful. From the first poem, Mennies captured my attention. She’s precise with words and her poems are full of musings about the female body as well as longing and grief. Just lovely. Highly recommend.

[Carla]

Simply beautiful, meditative, deeply felt. The poet addresses a projection of her (bisexual,spiritual) self, “Naomi.” Like the Jewish God, “Naomi” is always present/absent— the author writes: “I will wait here, reading, for the sun to rise, to show you what it decides.”

[solenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

<3

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Full disclosure that I know Rachel and looooove her.) These poems are so good. I kept reading and saying "RACHEL!" in my head because of how beautiful and perfect these poems are. Higly recommended if you like poetry, intertextuality, great images, sex, sexuality, and (dislike) anxiety and depression.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies (BOA Editions, 2021) is an intimately provocative collection of poems-as-love-letters — some sent and others unfinished drafts — from one woman to another over the course of nearly two years, beginning in summer 2016. It’s clear that the narrator and Naomi once had a close relationship and that Naomi is no longer physically in the narrator’s life, for reasons that are less clear. (“Are you safe where you are/Where are you Naomi/ (I have imagined your death/I keep imagining it this morning.”)

In these poems, Mennies beautifully explores an abundance of emotionally-laden themes. There is the understanding of one’s (perhaps subconscious) acquiescence to familial norms and expectations and the desire to defy conformity. (“Naomi, I have built my life in the shape of a house that my grandmother would know how to keep. Realizing this I long to unbrick it.”) There are references to the Judaic tradition (also found in Mennies’ award-winning debut poetry collection The Glad Hand of God Points Backward, which I reviewed here), to Pittsburgh neighborhoods that could represent places in any other city, to suicidal ideation, to mental health struggles.

(“They say not all panic attacks are visible to an outsider. Like the morning I spent walking around the Northside to find a warm place to write to you — how fear’s hand grew, how it latticed my ribs and pressed so surely down. What do you want? I asked my body — what more could you possibly want? — but the body bowed under pressure, crumpling to its knees in the middle of the loose-bricked sidewalk.”) Relatedly, there is a quest to understand her body. (“Naomi, I write to you at thirty. I carry around this muscular bag. Shouldn’t each spirit eventually accept her body?“)

With its numerous references to women poets and their work, The Naomi Letters also serves as an homage and celebration of other strong voices that dared to speak their truths. The narrator, however, doesn’t see herself as among them. (“Have you realized my utter ordinariness yet — how each book I read you also lives in a thousand libraries? The same poets staring from the same weathered book jackets, witnessing the hand opening to the same page.”) It is hoped that Rachel Mennies, with the strength of her second collection of poetry, does.

Bearing witness to the narrator’s inner tumult and longing through these letters to Naomi feels akin to sharing a cathartic experience. We come to care and worry about the narrator. We want her to be okay. We see her struggle, her growth and celebrate her ultimate acceptance of what is gone and what is yet to be. (“I am learning to love equally the dead flowers in the vase and the ones I’ve just planted, wet with new life.“

The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies will be published by BOA editions on April 27, 2021. Thanks to BOA editions and Edelweiss for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Arthie · Rating 4 out of 5]

love I love poetry

[River · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here are letters from one woman to another woman - Naomi - whom she loves. The letters are in the form of beautiful poems. The letters are dated from 2016 to 2018, the narrator writing about her day, her life, her desires for Naomi. Some of my favorite lines:

"All my life, I have measured my days by the gestures of a beloved."

"When I imagine touching you I rename myself: animal."

"I long to trade our body heat back and forth, raising both our temperatures."

And a couple of my favorite overall poems:

December 11. 2016
A friend has just left her girlfriend.

Each time there is the beginning, she said, where I am best - where I am ways sure.

The trouble, she said, is with everything in between.

I once thought all I ever wanted was the trouble [...]

December 14, 2016
[...] Naomi I have built my life in the shape of a house that my grandmother would know how to keep.

Realizing this I long to unbroken it. [...]

*****
The Naomi Letters sings to me, and the sound is like no other. I adored these letter poems. I devoured them. I savored them and I will cherish them. I am so glad to have had the opportunity to read them.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies is a rich, beautiful collection of poems in the format of love letters to Naomi, the lost love of our narrator. The epistolary format lends an extra level of intimacy to these sensual poems, and they read as confessions of love, grief, and acceptance. “The problem with certainty lives in its instability: how this afternoon I sliced open a peach at its seam, finding it gone to mush. I licked each wet wrist before I threw the peach in the garbage. Yesterday it would have been delicious — the day before, inedible. What I’m trying to say, Naomi, is you found me at the exact right time.”

Over the course of a year, we are alongside the narrator on a journey through her relationship with Naomi, and it’s dissolution. Both celebratory and mournful, The Naomi Letters reminded me of my all-time favorite book, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. I loved it.

Thanks to the publisher, BOA Editions, for an advance copy of this book.

[J Macarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read THE NAOMI LETTERS (BOA Editions, 2021), collection of epistolary poetry by Rachel Mennies is to be enspelled, like one who discovers a trove of kept secret letters in an attic trunk, and to be immediately taken into thrall by their intimate, Sapphic, and seasonal exchanges, which meditate on place and belonging, gender identity, sexual expression, mental health, Jewish heritage and culture, and respond to literary forewriters, who explored similar topics. At turns tender, sweet, erotic, devotional, and expansive: “Naomi, even today, I arrived to the mat ready not to meditate, but to dissolve.” These poems “strip [themselves] of spirit and stand before you.” Witness: “The woman you turned to light, to shadow, and back

(at last!
at last!)
to light—"

[Allie Dulabaum · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5. I really appreciated the Jewish representation and loved learning about Naomi in the Jewish faith. I've never thought about the similarity of otherness in religion and sexuality. There were a lot of really good one-liners in here. But I felt like the surrounding poems and lines and flow and sometimes the images and maybe even just the book was too similar in my identity for me to enjoy. It didn't hit me where I wish it did. And while I don't think that's Mennies fault... but.......................................... maybe HHAHA. PeACE and love.

[Lukas Sarnow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, fun to read a collection of poems I despise. Hasn't happened so acutely, so maybe my taste in poetry is getting more refined.

Tangent: I get the bowerbird is a fun word with subtle meaning embedded in their monogamous relationship, but holy shit so many poets use the gosh darn bowerbird. I haven't read that many poetry collections and the bowerbird as appeared in over a third of them. Is this a trend?

[Alissa Hattman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Naomi Letters is an epistolary narrative filled with desire, longing, and loss. Formally inventive meditations on identity, grief, sexuality, and spirituality, this collection of letters, half-letters, and unsent drafts to a love—an obsession—unanswered, lingers in the heart and the mind. A wonderful book. Absolutely electric.

[maisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this collection! The concept of letters makes the poems feel intimate, and private. The poems are tender yet exude so much girth in each one. The collection is highly romantic, and it’s sapphic tones are overflowing throughout. Rachel Mennies’ writing is stunning and I look forward to checking out more of her work!

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book. I rushed wholeheartedly from the very first poem toward the last, then immediately went back to start again.

[Julie Rae Rae Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing book of work.

[Hannah VanderHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous—beautiful-limbed, careful and yet risking in all its ways. Love this new book of poems from Rachel Mennies. Truly a work of art, a body of art—belles lettres!

[May Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

maybe it's because i love writing letters. and there's vulnerability. and it's all bared, all out there. i love this.

[K. Iver · Rating 5 out of 5]

a favorite book on desire

[nikita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll never leave you, I say, I’ll never leave, but the body already dreams of God

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was lovely will definitely be re-reading in the future

[LeMorka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved it, it had so many good moments and thoughts!! 4.6 stars

[Dorsey Craft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting. Could be used in syllabi on epistolary form, the everyday/quotidian, desire, and/or the divine.