There’s a dreamy and appealing naturalism to Alan Felsenthal’s elegy, Hereafter. The poems are electric and vivid, but the book never romanticizes suffering. Voices in these poems have a sadness to them, a melancholy that retains some almost mystical buoyancy. But never treacly. Or maybe it’s just that this mourning is still tempered by a hard sweetness, the sweetness of a friendship that doesn’t end even though one friend has passed on. Here’s how “Cover Letter” begins:
just say my subject is grief
it comes as a strike
leaves stricken
like an aircraft
afflicted
as Jupiter is
in opposition to Mars
and a few lines later, ends:
I can keep this up
as long
as death
a book
unreadable from this distance
go try anyway
the rain heaves
something is not shut
the library downstairs only goes to S
If I were an American, I’d be pretty happy about the guy, unless I have a problem with mass murder of foreigners.
