Nocturne

by Jodie Hollander

Longlisted for Laurel Prize 2023.

Set in a technicolour world of dreams, ghosts, classical music, and Key West storms, Jodie Hollander's compelling second collection charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist. These bold and arresting poems, rich with musicality, and fierce in their emotional honesty, chart the complicated repercussions of family dysfunction and musical obsession while traversing the landscape of the human condition and exploring the need for refuge in the natural world.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2023

Reviews

[Melissa Sevigny · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems of Jodie Hollander's Nocturne gather the strands of childhood trauma, rage, grief, and loss into a strong cord that pulls the reader toward, at last, the realization that "my life is more than enough / to be alive is a blessing." It feels earned, that moment, in a way that stories of redemption and healing rarely do. Hollander does not shy away from the dark and difficult, from violence and horror, and yet her poems are shot through with startling moments of beauty: a string of marigolds made into a gift, lilacs, the moon, the horses that reappear and disappear in her work with unworldly grace. On the unsteady ground destabilized by generational trauma, Hollander finds space to hold the moments where she "felt the world world good / and felt the earth secure." These are poems to return to again and again.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This picture of the past I have is blue.” Jodie Hollander, who may be one of the best poets at work right now, follows up her brilliant My Dark Horses with Nocturne, which continues her hard exploration of generational trauma and familial abuse. Where her debut focused especially on her mother, here she turns her focus more often on her father, particularly the obsession that so monopolised her father’s time and attention: “Nothing would change, / nothing would ever change: / music was still all my Father lived for, / perhaps the only thing still keeping him alive.” His hands are seen “avoiding his wife's hands, / the hands of own kids, / and seeming only to ache / for the applause of strangers hands.” In a series of dream poems, Hollander conjures an uncanny sense of proxy-familiarity and painful resonances: “I grow enraged I start to scream: / why the hell did this piano fall on me? / And when no one answers, I just laugh, / and looking up, I ask: what else will crash down / on me, from God's big attic?”; “under a heavy sky / the darkness is so thick I can't see / my bloody kid teeth, scattered on the pavement.” Numerous poems in the book recall the horse motif that runs through her debut, galloping now in several directions. Something I found especially moving is the awareness and channelling of her rage, which floored me throughout. “I go back to the tundra where you sent me / and live there alone in the darkness, / and page by page myself begin to compose, / at long last, the story of my rage / the likes of which you would not believe.”

[Ronan Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Jodie Hollander's latest poetry collection, "Nocturne," she demonstrates the same unflinching exploration of family relationships and their inter-generational sequelae, as she did in her first collection, “My Dark Horses”.

While there are no happy endings here, no cinematic resolutions, no comforting reconciliations, the overall tone is far from bleak or hopeless. As with real life, the collection is punctuated by moments of transcendence, beauty, grief, and unbearable loss.

In “Nocturne”, Hollander expands the space of her poetry further into the natural world, but even then it is not always a place of consolation. Many of the environments she describes, Alaska, Nepal, the Australian outback, reflect the sharp edges of her inner landscape and the tectonic pressures that have been part of her psychological formation.

The collection’s strongest poems, in my view, provide a child’s perspective on parenting (e.g., Blue Rhapsody) and on the disintegration of marriage (e.g., The Sock-Off). Then there are the heartbreaking poems dealing with the inevitable reckoning with the past (e.g., The Pink Scarf, Dream #2, Dream #5). As with both of Hollander’s collections, her best poems often focus on tiny details that illuminate like a floodlight (e.g., Mouse) and remain as an afterimage in one's mind’s eye.

[Colette Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jodie Hollander’s NOCTURNE

In “Questions of Travel,” the poet Elizabeth Bishop asks,
“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?”

NOCTURNE is a sea vessel. Barrels of salted cod, fresh water, hard tack
and rum roll in her hold like goods (or poems) that must be there.
Hollander’s ship, a modern cutter in fact, has the strength to face psychic
and physical pain. This, while staying attuned to sounds and surges
in language—and while vividly rendering ‘ports’ like Kathmandu, Australia,
Alaska and elsewhere. NOCTURNE also brims with nature, as an explorer’s log
would. Poems are entitled “Crow,” “Moose” “Kangaroos,” and
“Prairie Smoke.” Sometimes these align with the speaker’s grief.
Other times, they are beacons of change and hope. The reply to Bishop
is, No, we leave home with this poet to question ourselves.
Holland’s voyage left me stunned.

--Colette Anderson Gill

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dramatic work of staggering emotion.
Not at all light reading, but every page requires one to stop and take a breath. Hollander's handles language and depth as a great master of the art. We see ourselves in the mirror she holds up to her own life. As with all important literature, we are required to examine ourselves in the dim candle light of a child staring up from under the furniture at the malfunctioning family machine around her. We descend into dreams of horses. A fantasy of comfort in a world that offers little. How often have we stepped into that gloom? Are our fingers on the lightswitch, or are we ourselves monsters of the darkness?
And we know the ending. Life persists. Love can be found.

[Clive Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of strong and indeed “terrific” poems, many concerned, as the cover note indicates, with family dysfunction, which was also the dominant topic of her strong first collection, My Dark Horses. But there are poems here that offer glimpses of other modes, too, poems that focus on some aspect of the non-human world and that strike a perhaps less tormented note. Several such poems fall in the later pages and thus leaven the overall effect. In the face of the damage our species has done to the planet, attention to the natural world is likely to be at best an ambiguous comfort, but inasmuch as such poems turn outward and away from the inner agonies which occupy so many pages, I will be interested to see where Jodie Hollander’s fine poetic instincts lead her next.

[Consuelo Marshall]

Jodie Hollander's second book of poetry, Nocturne, will leave you breathless and gasping for air. From the first poem describing a hurricane in Key West, you will be lifted up into a world you'd never imagine. Her poem, "Hands," a close look at a father's precious hands you will invited to the poets dreams of the Himalayas and by the time you read, "The Pink Scarf," these poems might transport you back in time to when you were a child. Nocturne is filled with well-crafted poems that work together to form this precise collection. Readers of this book who go back and re-read poems will find new insights and appreciation with each reading.

[Anne Van]

"Nocturne" is a fitting title for a journey of night music, both fierce and tender, through a dysfunctional childhood with a self-absorbed concert pianist father and a helpless mother, to adult dark nights of the soul. No matter how far away the poet travels, her dark shadow "horses" and nightmares follow and peace is elusive. Nature is wild and unforgiving with violent storms and rain and an unforgiving brutal Australian sun. And yet the deep blue/black color of these mesmerizing frank poems arrive at hope and healing like "a blue butterfly escaping into the light." "Two Horses," Bishop Beach," "Lilacs," and "Gore Range," approach something near happiness. Truly beautiful music.

[Mary Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I savored the first collection, "Dark Horses". With this second collection, perhaps because I am delving in more deeply to the study of poetry once more, I found this collection astonishing. It is as if a story keeps deepening with each page. There's a glitter in the narrator's childhood dark waters that keeps one afloat. It may be the conciseness of the form giving such light; it may be the waters themselves that are being examined; so turbulent yet quiet in their emotions, so wise and compassionate with the knowing that the shore is within reach.

[David]

These poems take up where My Dark Horses ended. But the rhythms of the poems and their natural force offer a tonic against some of the somber themes of childhood trauma and parental strife. Their very creation and existence strike a positive note, and the natural world helps balance it all: fishing, the moon, green beans, kangaroos, eagles, storms, flowers, and, of course, horses. The imagery of these poems stays with the reader. I recommend this book to all who value well-made poems and concise language. This book confirms the healing nature of poetry.

[Matthew Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up to peruse on a tropical vacation and was shocked at how engrossing I found it! I finished the book instead of going to the beach. The author’s subject matter seems deeply personal and exposed in a way that we rarely experience in a time of indulgent and superficial self-regard played out online. The intensity of the poems may seem an affront to some at first, but I think that’s a gift from the author. We might all benefit from. If we had half of her capacity for reflection. That’s a world I’d like to see.

[Nadia Kalman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Jodie Hollander's previous collection My Dark Horses cover-to-cover, like a novel: it was that good and that gripping. This new collection is somehow even better than the last one. I highly, highly recommend it, especially to readers trying to come to grips with familial darkness in their pasts.

[Lisa Stoeffler · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a captivating, honest and emotional collection. Thank you, Jodie, for pouring your entire self into these poems. It is without filters and completely draws you in, something you don't often encounter in writing. Loved every dimension of this book - from the deeply personal to the wildly dreamy. For anyone who likes poetry and is looking to transport yourself through every style and emotion, give it a read. It will take you on an unexpected journey.

[BR · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic must read for anybody who loves poetry with rhythmic musicality! Haunting, playful, dark and luminous, the imagery is so vivid that you feel you are right there in the setting of each poem. Whether floating through etherial dreams, braving storms, witnessing the beauty of natural landscapes or listening to virtuous piano playing, I am gripped in the narrator's experience. I can't stop rereading these poems!

[Cymelle Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nocturne is a lyrical guide for those exploring themes of familial trauma, uprootedness and musicality in the natural world. As a writer I am always seeking my call to action... my next move in a series of calculated decisions to advocate for a better world to write in. Jodie is careful in her work to advocate for preserving natural spaces and the call to action is clear: protect these pockets of healing.

[Karen Shanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will not regret adding this gem to your poetry collection. Jodie’s writing elicits the most vulnerable and visceral reaction from me- exactly why I love poetry and Jodie’s work- because not touches something so raw inside of me. Her unapologetic writing will remind you of your shadow spaces and also shine light into the bright spots of hope and creation that we need now more than ever. No matter what- I think you feel deeply into her work.

[ROMAN JOHN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nocturne by Jodie Hollander is a breathtaking book of poems that has left an everlasting impression on me. At times I felt like a voyeur peeping through the windows of a talented yet highly dysfunctional family, bringing up my own childhood trauma and memories. I enjoyed the dreamscape elements of her poems, which actually helped me get through this sometimes very difficult subject matter. Jodie Hollander is a voice to be reckoned with. I very much look forward to reading her other works.

[Harmony Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jodie Hollander's collection of poems is both beautiful and devastating. She creates a picture of a shattering childhood lacking emotional support contrasted with an adulthood in which the pieces are picked up, examined, and healed by exposure to the wider and wilder world. It shows the power of nature and language to allow us to reknit the torn parts of ourselves.

[Mike Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jodie’s brilliant narrative on some of her life experience. Each place in nature or time has its reason. None more so than her raw and sometimes painful reflection on family. Definitely not a casual stroll down memory lane. To write with such openness and honesty takes a certain type of courage. I thoroughly recommend this compelling collection of poems.

[John Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jodie Holander crafts evocative poems using unforgettable language. This collection shares family dysfunction, classical music, and dreams. Her work reads like she's on the sofa telling stories. As intimacies unwind, recognizable characters and events leave the reader breathless with honesty shared.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nocturne is so full of raw emotion and vivid details that I feel like I am there in a dream, sometimes as a witness, and sometimes I feel like I embody Jodie herself. This is a beautiful book of poetry about the human experience - trauma, beauty in nature, connection with self and environment, and the cycle of life and death.

[Luke Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nocturne" by Jodie Hollander is a work by a poet operating at the top of her powers. Standout poems for me include "The School Nurse", "The Sock-Off", "Gymnastics Class". Hollander has an excellent ability to tell a full-circle narrative within a poem and weave it together with dark, foreboding music.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is for anyone looking to heal from family or generational trauma. Jodie is brilliant, brave and has helped me heal through her strong words, imagery and connection to nature in her new book Nocturne.

[Cathy Sarkowsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jodie Hollander's new book of poetry, Nocturne, is stunning. So many vivid moments and stories, such depth of emotion and truth. I am mesmerized by a Hollander's voice and look forward to following her work, always.

[Sedona R. M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this poetry collection for class and I’m eternally grateful to my professor for introducing me to Ms. Hollander. Each poem was equally gorgeous, rhythmic, and moving, rife with imagery and brilliant metaphor. I will never look at horses the same way.

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jodie has an eloquent way of capturing your attention in a very visual imagery experience through words that evoke emotion and presence; you feel it as an experience yourself and enjoy every word and line to the finish, leaving you excited to read more.

[Jared Orsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hollander is a magician with words. She can evoke any feeling or image with her poetry. I was not an avid poetry reader until I read her previous book My Dark Horses. Nocturne is even better. Now I'm a big fan.

[Peter Friederici · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nocturne is a beautifully written collection that coheres around central themes: family trauma, memory, music, and the redemptive power nature can provide. It's a slim volume that, like nature itself, well rewards multiple visits.

[Cheryl B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jodie's second collection of poems in Nocturne. Her poems are full of mystery and intrigue. The dream poems are compelling and indicate her deep connection to her father and his career as a concert pianist. I highly recommend her first book as well - My Dark Horses which takes us through life with her mother. Jodie's writing is full of musicality and dreamlike experiences. Her writing style is unique and beautiful.