once upon a twin

by Raymond Luczak

When Raymond Luczak was growing up deaf in a hearing Catholic family of nine children, his mother shared conflicting stories about having had a miscarriage after—or possibly around—the time he was conceived. As an elegy to his lost twin, this book If he had a twin, just how different would his life have been? 

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 10, 2021

Reviews

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once Upon a Twin by Raymond Luczak goes deep into his longing for connection and belonging. He has the belief he has a twin. There is mystery around his mother's pregnancy, a reported miscarriage with different dates given. Born into a large Catholic family he does not fit in. He is deaf from a young age and once discovered he was not allowed to use sign in the household, but sent for speach lessons, and stayed with several different families and is made fun of, or bullied, in school. He is attracted to men, which his family also cannot accept and don't want to hear about. It is no wonder he has such a strong desire to have a twin. The one person in his family he felt loved by was his grandmother who had a stroke and died. He recounts his memories of her in the poem, "gods copper."

In the long section Twinhood, he writes, "twins have their own thing deeper than blood deeper than family deeper than love." Later in the same poem, "hearing families can be toxic sometimes you have to quit them cold turkey or do suicide." And, "the hearing world/where everyone has ears but never listens." But his twin, "we held each other for nine months—the veins of our heart once braided inside the womb of our church were we worshiped—we had breathed in each others scent—without saying another word wed fall into an embrace—" A long love letter to his twin in this poem "holy communion" that ends with "my pearl onion my lima bean my petite pea—my diamond my pebble my atom—in the womb of my death i long to find you waiting for me with your needle ready to sew both helixes of our dna back together—no more fucking stories except the one about us finally coming home to each other"

He does not use capital letters, nor contractions in this full book. Since I've only read this one book of his, I do not know if this is only for this book or a consistent style he uses in his other many books. This is a brave and important book of poems that was published by Gallaudet University Press, a branch of the college for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington DC.

[Andrew H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once Upon a Twin neatly puns upon "once upon a time", but this is no conventional story for childhood. This volume of poems explores the unreliability of memory and how (at a psychic Level) we all search for a twin, another half, as Plato imagined in The Symposium . Twinship is a subtle concept, ever changing and metamorphosing. Its imagery includes polarities, twin gods, shadows of the self, doppelgangers, and the alchemical androgyne -- a metaphor for how an individual attempts to unite memories within themselves and become a unity. Once Upon a Twin focuses on speech and deafness, the evolution of language, an outsider's quest to become inside the world that is experienced. In these poems, Luczak writes with ludicity and confessional honesty. Around a core question -- was he part of a biological twinship? -- other images of doubles are arranged: a stranger who resembled him in London, the Narcisstic mirror image, and, most importantly, the friends that became projections of his need to connect and relate. The third section, "houghton 1974-76" is beautifully nuanced. Twin, etymologically, is connected to twine and twilight.
And these poems are twilight poems, poems that search for light amidst darkness. It is fitting that the volume should finish with "double helix kyrie" a search for mercy amongst the intertwining DNA of existence. The cover of Once Upon a Twin depicts Blake's Angel of the Revelation, a Romantic symbol of heroism which looms above the writer, St. John. It is a fitting image for Luczak is both the writer and the visionary in this book. The strength of the poems lies in their grounded technique, in how they are rooted in personal history.