{"id":4683,"date":"2019-11-18T17:19:48","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T17:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=4683"},"modified":"2019-11-18T17:19:48","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T17:19:48","slug":"one-house-back-from-one-house-down","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/one-house-back-from-one-house-down\/","title":{"rendered":"One House Back from One House Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

One House Down<\/em> by Gianna Russo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Madville Publishing, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paperback, 96 pages, $17.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

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The majority of the fifty-three poems that populate One House Down<\/em>, Gianna Russo\u2019s second poetry collection, are set in and around Tampa, Florida. As the poet guides us through a bit of Tampa\u2019s history\u2014the noisy streets, the voices of a hundred years and more\u2014we locate the growth of a community. The constant is Russo, a poet of <\/em>Tampa\u2014remarkable and protean, not unlike the city itself. Russo\u2019s poems are an honest record of a city\u2019s quick evolution, but most importantly, these poems are a love song for the family, friends, and neighbors who inhabit Tampa with her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of the collection\u2019s standout poems, \u201cWhere Letha Lived,\u201d addresses the value of the places we get to call home. The speaker\u2019s father begins the poem: \u201cYou know she helped raise you, says Dad. \/ They were lovely people. If you went by, she always invited you in<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 For the father, it is important that his daughter understand the privilege of acceptance, the willingness of another family to open their home to her. As the poem builds momentum, the speaker declares: \u201cI don\u2019t know how to feel about all this now.\u201d The poet is on the cusp of discovery, and the early placement of the poem in the collection elicits expectation in the reader\u2014will the poet discover how she feels about all this now?<\/p>\n

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The charm in \u201cWhere Letha Lived\u201d lies in how we come to know Letha. About a third of the way into the poem, Russo re-introduces lines and images, and this process of doubling continues to the poem\u2019s end. In a coy bit of plotting, the poem initiates the engagement of our memory. The stories Russo re-tells us about the life of Letha establish a sense of familiarity. Our memories become the speaker\u2019s memories. Letha becomes recognizable. Russo\u2019s use of memory, her coaxing us into our own memories of Letha is not coincidental. Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology. Russo is reaffirming her own fading memory of an important person in her life. The speaker says of Letha, \u201cShe must have had a kitchen garden. \/ Do I remember? No.\u201d The poet also points out the cultural boundaries during this time in her youth: \u201cOne end of the street, a clutch of tickseed. \/ The other end, the Italians, their tomatoes and greens.\u201d She sees, as an adult, the invisible lines of division we are ignorant of in youth\u2014a part of how she feels about all this now.<\/p>\n

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Russo works in free verse, but she also employs other poetic forms with similar, deft skill. There is an ekphrastic poem, a pantoum, a poem in the form of a cookbook recipe, and a poem in the shape of a standardized test, but the literal centerpiece of One House Down<\/em> is \u201cPecha Kucha for Big Guava.\u201d There are interesting and unlikely cultural connections in that title alone. Big Guava is a nickname for Tampa, and pecha kucha is a Japanese presentation method involving twenty slides, each accompanied by twenty seconds of dialogue. American poet Terrance Hayes adapted this storytelling technique for poetry, and Russo puts the form to great use, galvanizing the collection.<\/p>\n

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Russo\u2019s pecha kucha consists of twenty photographs of Tampa. Similar to the narrative construct of One House Down<\/em>, the photographs move through time (1920\u20131954). The photographs are necessary for the poetic form, but the poems that accompany the photographs stand on their own. These poems are so exquisitely written; the photographs are rendered moot. Here, you\u2019ll see what I mean\u2014the poem without the photograph:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>She\u2019s standing there like a ghost, but really<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>it was her house first. Those cabbage palms,<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>bougainvillea, white gardenia, beauty bush.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Her crone of a house wreathed in cracker rose. Now:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>sandspurs, boarded up windows, a locked door.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One House Down<\/em> is a deep map of Tampa and of the poet\u2019s familial connections to its neighborhoods. It\u2019s not quite written to the scope of Ulysses, <\/em>but this collection reads like a peripatetic narrative. What the reader discovers is a southern landscape replete with oaks, azaleas, and magnolias. \u201cIn the Midst of Magnolia\u201d is a singular, southern poem that is dedicated to Joelle Renee Ashley. Russo conjures the aroma of the magnolia: \u201cYour stories buried in the blooms, the creamy bowls of magnolia.\u201d The alliteration is wonderful. But the speaker struggles to get it right\u2014this poem in dedication: \u201cThe fading house on Rainbow Road \/ where voices ping-ponged in your brain,\u201d or \u201cA raunchy clause where the sexy you stretched herself out.\u201d These descriptions lead to the poem\u2019s conclusion:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The poem I wanted for you has failed me. Here:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>On long drives out to your house stars made a clich\u00e9 of the sky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>There was a gateway to grief and you walked through it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Magnolia perfume is the gist of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The speaker wants us to believe that these final lines are what exist on the other side of failure\u2014how all of us feel, or should feel\u2014about love, about friendship and family, but especially about the places we call home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The collection ends with \u201cSomewhere Jazz,\u201d a poem of exuberant reflection. Russo writes, \u201cI wanted this to be about the house.\u201d It\u2019s easy to believe the speaker is referring to the poem, but Russo has made this move before\u2014directly telling us where her narrative intentions have gone off the rails. The speaker is talking about the book itself\u2014the house of the book holding all of her loves, \u201cThe house where you called down all your ancestors. \/ Much before the house I thought was me was thrumming\u2014 \/ pure inside with jazz.\u201d And there\u2019s the turn, the moment where the poet figures things out. Russo has become the house she peers out from as the collection begins, and the house she dances within as the narrative of these endearing poems refuses to end, but instead plays on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Please also see “After the Poetry Reading: A Condom”<\/a> by Gianna Russo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Locating Home in the Poetry of Gianna Russo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4691,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[1315,432,1316,434],"class_list":["post-4683","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-fred-dale","tag-gianna-russo","tag-one-house-down","tag-tampa"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOne House Back from One House Down - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/one-house-back-from-one-house-down\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One House Back from One House Down - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Locating Home in the Poetry of Gianna Russo\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/one-house-back-from-one-house-down\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2019\/11\/One-House-Down-cover-detail-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"907\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"597\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/one-house-back-from-one-house-down\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/one-house-back-from-one-house-down\\\/\",\"name\":\"One House Back from One House Down - 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