![\"The](\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2021\/03\/2F23302B-AE85-4532-9956-B10F7B55F065-229x300.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nMilkweed Editions, 2020<\/p>\n
Hardcover, $22.00, 88 pages<\/p>\n
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Allison Adair\u2019s debut collection, The Clearing, <\/em>is a tumble down a familiar hillside that leaves the reader giggling or stuck in a blackberry bush. It is the sting of antiseptic on a hundred bramble scratches, but it is also the kiss on a forehead covered in bandages. The Clearing <\/em>is painful at times, since it is a catalog of victimhood, loss, and domestic violence\u2014desperate circumstance that sometimes ends in tragedy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMother of 2 Stabbed to Death in Silverton\u201d begins, \u201cThe woman was overheard in the town hall saying she was afraid \/ to do it, once and for all, that he would, like he\u2019s said, and he did.\u201d Adair shows little interest in overly intellectualizing sentiments. Instead, the sharp truth\u2014like a late-night phone call\u2014is often delivered deadpan, and the poetics do not suffer in the least. In fact, the plainspoken portrayal of surgically precise metaphors either jars the reader or leaves them misty-eyed. This poem ends on the neighbor\u2019s front porch, \u201cIt was an accident, he said, I never meant it. They stood there still \/ as newsprint.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I fear I am fixating on the grotesque, perhaps because it is captured so extraordinarily, but in truth the poetic landscapes found in The Clearing <\/em>are equally delightful\u2014the voices often nurturing and celebratory, even when wrestling with fear and darkness. In \u201cCity Life,\u201d the narrator and her daughter are learning to live in a city full of rats: \u201cFor her, death \/ is the longest nap imaginable, \/ maybe four hours. But we always wake \/ at the end.\u201d And no matter where Adair leads us\u2014toward a mining disaster, a recurring dream, or a historical reenactment\u2014there will likely be animals there to keep us unnerved or entertained. \u201cI thought I knew the sound of darkness, \/ the slow leather collapse of a bat\u2019s wing \/ folding into itself, the swollen fucking of a cloud \/ of them wrestling for space on the cave\u2019s drapery.\u201d In Adair\u2019s world, the creatures morph continually, and the lines are winding and tourniquet tight. \u00a0\u201cA ruined animal will drag itself miles only to become \/ a desiccated hutch, burrow of maggots, coyote trough.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adair\u2019s phrases are rural incantations that swirl in the throat like heavy smoke, and each image is refreshing as a gulp from the backyard spigot\u2014worth returning to again and again. And beneath each poem lies a meticulous sonic foundation. There is a rhythmic precision, too, that shifts in accordance with the whims of the poet. The reader is aware of their own slow breathing, for example, when an animal is trapped or desperate. At other moments, the rhythm almost mirrors the image, such as in the closing of \u201cGettysburg\u201d: \u201cThe caterpillar inches along, lost \/ in its sad accordion hymn.\u201d And while there are deeply personal poems in this collection, Adair is as\u2014if not more\u2014interested in writing about historical events and rural places, such as \u201cSilverton, \u201da town in Colorado with no more than seven hundred residents. These poems are not unlike blue whales with hearts as big as rental cars. Winner of the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Clearing<\/em> is a light show all its own, pungent and beautiful as a prairie fire. It is a collection one shouldn\u2019t risk lending out, if they ever want to see it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is a collection one shouldn\u2019t risk lending out, if they ever want to see it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6222,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[13,6,347,1791,1792],"class_list":["post-6220","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-allison-adair","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-book-review","tag-collin-callahan","tag-the-clearing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n