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Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry
Lena: Poems
Cassie Pruyn's Lena asks new questions: why we love, why we grieve. We've read elegies before, but not like this. A lush and unsparing first book, Lena asks readers to understand love—crucially, a first love, an erotic love-in the context not of a love lost but instead of an identity gained: we must consider not only "was she worth it?," but also "who has she made me?" Pruyn lets us feel what lovers feel—the magnetism, the physicality, the tenderness, the rage, the wondering—with language both musical and visceral. In these poems, the landscape is a character in itself; the past is as tangible as the present. Pruyn takes us to the "Lost Love Lounge," we ride in a "car / red as a dragon," and we observe the beloved "stick herself in the belly with a needle" in the way "she used to attach her cufflinks." This is love and grief raised to the highest power; it is a debut not to be missed.
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 8, 2018
This beautiful collection is about love, loss, but these terms are so limiting, it's much more than that. This is a love song, an extended poem of the ache of love. This was deeply sexy, and twinged with the risk of love of another. Do not miss this collection.
July 11, 2017
This is an intoxicating, sensual, and heart-wrenching debut. Cassie Pruyn rips our heart out and patches it back together with waterfront views, an orchard rendezvous, and a dash of sea salt. I'm jealous of anyone who still has the pleasure of reading this collection for the first time.
May 14, 2017
Lena is an amazing poetry book that will stay with you forever. It will make you look at love and loss in a way you've never looked at it before. I have read Lena twice through and look forward to re reading it over and over again. It is not to be missed.
May 17, 2017
This first book, an elegy for a first love, is powerful, erotic, and, to quote the inside cover, "unsparing." (I am less familiar with the language of poetry critique, so I suppose it's fair to steal some.) The poem "Self-Interrogation" will stick with me for a long time.
March 8, 2021
Lena: Poems is a book that explores the many ways that love, romance, and sexuality play a part of grief when we lose someone we love. The poems follow the speaker's romance with a woman named Lena. Lena's mother does not approve of the relationship between these two, and while many of the people focus on the beauty of love and passion, they also echo with the heartbreak of familial disconnect, the breaking down of the mother-daughter relationship. And as the poems move through this narrative, it becomes apparent that not only does the speaker leave Lena at some point, but Lena has also died of cancer.
This book hit me rather subtly. The poems have a quiet, subdued reverence to them that imbibes each line with a sense of regret and acceptance simultaneously. The examination of lovers torn apart, of one lover leaving the other all at once and without warning, and then the reality of cancer's all-consuming authority, bleed in small doses off the page. It's almost as though by reading this book, the reader is being given a blood transfusion of the speaker's experiences; but the blood isn't rushed into the body all at once. Rather, it's drop by drop. Word by word. Line by line. Page by page.
One thing I appreciate about this book is that it's vulnerability is stark. It's one of the less subtle parts of the writing, how honest and raw the speaker is with the reader and with herself. The love between the speaker and Lena is romantic, but not romanticized. There are moments of the ugliness of their relationship that shine through, reminding us that these two people are, in fact, human, fallible, and selfish. The speaker doesn't try to justify her choices, nor does she try and explain away the apparent regret she feels for abandoning Lena. It's simply an honest acknowledgement of the choice she made and the consequences she suffered. She's not asking the reader for sympathy. She's not vicariously seeking forgiveness.
She is simply inviting us to hold space for her and for Lena, who has passed on.
The writing in this book is almost like a lullaby in places, so soothing and quiet, they feel like whispers. "By morning / we had set ourselves adrift / on a white raft on a gray sea / the cold of which / was a fact that couldn't touch us" (pg 3).
"Soon enough light seeped / beneath the rim of the overturned sky" (pg 13).
"Or when I left her, all at once, without warning / and felt nothing by relief" (pg 14).
"What would I say? / I'm sorry or / it was you who taught me how to stay away" (pg 16).
This is a book of confessions as much as it is a book of letting go. Many of the poems, if not all of them, seem to be written to Lena, even when not directed at her specifically. And as we are given more of this narrative, more of the picture, we also are taken father away from it, as though the speaker is trying to preserve the gentle purity of the memories while also allowing us a few glimpses of her pain. It's sharing and hiding all at once.
One thing I love about poetry is how multifaceted it is. I've read other poems and collections of poems by queer writers, and while there are similar themes, each book is entirely its own creation. This one is no exception. There is a sense of uniqueness among these pages that also smells of familiarity, of community. And by holding space for this work, the reader is brought into the conversation, into the community. It's seeing. It's knowing. It's breathing even after a soul has left this earth.
It's witnessing the holding on and the letting go.
This book hit me rather subtly. The poems have a quiet, subdued reverence to them that imbibes each line with a sense of regret and acceptance simultaneously. The examination of lovers torn apart, of one lover leaving the other all at once and without warning, and then the reality of cancer's all-consuming authority, bleed in small doses off the page. It's almost as though by reading this book, the reader is being given a blood transfusion of the speaker's experiences; but the blood isn't rushed into the body all at once. Rather, it's drop by drop. Word by word. Line by line. Page by page.
One thing I appreciate about this book is that it's vulnerability is stark. It's one of the less subtle parts of the writing, how honest and raw the speaker is with the reader and with herself. The love between the speaker and Lena is romantic, but not romanticized. There are moments of the ugliness of their relationship that shine through, reminding us that these two people are, in fact, human, fallible, and selfish. The speaker doesn't try to justify her choices, nor does she try and explain away the apparent regret she feels for abandoning Lena. It's simply an honest acknowledgement of the choice she made and the consequences she suffered. She's not asking the reader for sympathy. She's not vicariously seeking forgiveness.
She is simply inviting us to hold space for her and for Lena, who has passed on.
The writing in this book is almost like a lullaby in places, so soothing and quiet, they feel like whispers. "By morning / we had set ourselves adrift / on a white raft on a gray sea / the cold of which / was a fact that couldn't touch us" (pg 3).
"Soon enough light seeped / beneath the rim of the overturned sky" (pg 13).
"Or when I left her, all at once, without warning / and felt nothing by relief" (pg 14).
"What would I say? / I'm sorry or / it was you who taught me how to stay away" (pg 16).
This is a book of confessions as much as it is a book of letting go. Many of the poems, if not all of them, seem to be written to Lena, even when not directed at her specifically. And as we are given more of this narrative, more of the picture, we also are taken father away from it, as though the speaker is trying to preserve the gentle purity of the memories while also allowing us a few glimpses of her pain. It's sharing and hiding all at once.
One thing I love about poetry is how multifaceted it is. I've read other poems and collections of poems by queer writers, and while there are similar themes, each book is entirely its own creation. This one is no exception. There is a sense of uniqueness among these pages that also smells of familiarity, of community. And by holding space for this work, the reader is brought into the conversation, into the community. It's seeing. It's knowing. It's breathing even after a soul has left this earth.
It's witnessing the holding on and the letting go.
January 29, 2021
A gorgeous, heartbreaking, tightly knit collection of poems that will have you reading it cover to cover in one sitting. It's a coming-of-age story, a love story, and an elegy, all in one.
February 14, 2022
3.5 stars
December 29, 2018
Cassie Pruyn is one of the best poets writing today, and we're lucky that she's only at the beginning of her career. The poems in Lena are so strong, so emotionally wrought and yet so carefully crafted! They have stuck with me since my first reading of this book. And now, having reread the book, I am reminded of how good they are. This is a must read book, and I can't wait to see what comes next from this author.
December 22, 2017
Out of the twenty-something poetry books I’ve read this year, this intense, sensual, and beautiful collection ranks among the finest.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews