Only

by Rebecca Foust

Urgent from the outset, Rebecca Foust's Only insists that the only thing worth writing about is everything. Prompted to confront what she does not know, the speaker lists, "Null. All. What's after death or before." This book scales the cliff-face of adulthood, that paradoxical ascent in which the longer we live the less we know of life, in which we find that each of us is only ourselves and yet delicately interconnected with everyone, everything, else. These candid lyrics ponder our broken political systems, family (dys)function and parenting challenges, divergent and intersecting identities, the complexities of sexuality, natural refuge and climate catastrophe, and in general what it means to be human in a world that sometimes feels as if it is approaching apocalypse. At the ledge of this abyss, however, Foust reminds us of the staggering beauty of life, the legacies of survival in the echoes of care that outlast "I came / to the canyon rim and saw // how best to carry I let the stone go."

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2022

About the author

Rebecca Foust’s new book, ONLY released from Four Way Books in 2022 and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly Foust is the author of three chapbooks including The Unexploded Ordnance Bin (2018 Swan Scythe Chapbook Award) and four books including Paradise Drive, (Press 53 Award for Poetry). Recognitions include the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry judged by Kaveh Akbar, the CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, a 2017-19 Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Recent poems are in The Cincinnati Review, The Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, POETRY, and elsewhere. Contact her on her at https://rebeccafoust.com/ or @FoustRebecca on Facebook, or @rebecca.foust.52 on Instagram.
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Reviews

[Kat Harnisch · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some really strong poems in here, particularly at the ends of the Remember and Watershed sections. I am unsure if I did not feel as connected to the majority of these poems because of the content (specifically, I do not have a neurodivergent adult son) or because I paused in the middle of this book, then picked it up again a week later. I am unsure if I fully grasp the reasoning for the titling of sections (this is particularly true in the section titled Only). Remember and Watershed seemed to have cohesive themes, but I am unsure on the middle section titled Only. Some of the poems in the Only section felt as if they could be placed in Remember (for example, “Lies I Told My Third Child”).

My favorite poems were “Collaborator,” “Sit With Me,” and “Blackout.”
“Collaborator” showed the mother’s conflicting feelings well, and “Sit With Me” and “blackout” showed emotion between two people well. My other favorite was “Night Skating,” not for the emotion but for the scenic imagery. This scenic imagery came through really well in “Watershed” too! Though there were these strong poems in the book, I felt overall it didn’t feel as cohesive as I would have preferred.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A monster. Picasso’s vexed mirror. O God,

how will you judge the quick and the dead
when the dead include this child for a martyr?
Can you really still look and say it is good?
The monster and the mirror—it’s all you, God.

(from “Guernica”)

—

You made me while I made you; nothing is owed. I came
to the canyon rim and saw

how best to carry you: I let the stone go.

(from “Echo”)

—

It’s 52 o’clock & the Project of You
has begun anew: quit drinking
again, start jogging. Floss. Get a clue
about what-it-all-means, what you
mean to do. Wake before noon
now & then. Mend the broken yolk
of your mind; bail its sunk boat.
Meditate. And for God’s sake, eat
more fruit. See the dentist & proctologist;
have some fun. Commit at least one
unoriginal sin (with a condom, please,
& without a gun). Go to the barn, burn
it down, burn the day. Then you can
see the moon, without yourself in the way.

("Self-Improvement")

[Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the burning idyll-wilds of Marin County to the backwards trains of Altoona, it all came back to that deer against the windshield, that little brown bat flushed away — “at the heart of the heart” of the lakefront about to fall. Foust’s words burrow simultaneously in the womb as they do up a mountain stream — cavernous yet confessing, a fireside collection that warms the soul before simmering it to black. Her vignettes of California bloom in both the untaken dreams and the night journeys, relief in the rupture, regret in the unsaid — thought remainders on the lifeline. Reminders that what we’ve already lost are part of what we keep on our way forward.

Rebecca Foust