{"id":9903,"date":"2024-09-17T18:26:56","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T18:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=9903"},"modified":"2024-09-17T18:27:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T18:27:35","slug":"greater-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/17\/greater-ghost\/","title":{"rendered":"Greater Ghost"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Wound Ran Deeper<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Christian Collier\u2019s debut poetry collection brings together grief, transience, and the beautiful fragility of life and love.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Alice Courtright<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In his new book of poetry, Greater Ghost, <\/em>Christian Collier offers moving glimpses into a dynamic world of Southern landscapes and brutal grief. \u201cI am soaked in my losses,\u201d the opening poem, \u201cBoot Hill,\u201d begins. The speaker asks, \u201cwhat is time but a shaky way\/ to try to measure what can never be had back?\u201d The poems capture, one by one, losses of loved ones and strangers, both with intimate care. In one poem, \u201cIn His Place,\u201d \u201cwind drags its ghost\u201d to the speaker of the poem, who looks up from watching the television. The wind, he writes, \u201c[pulls] my face from the news of another Black man murdered.\u201d He realizes a cousin, who was killed by a bullet, is trying to communicate with him. \u201cI am on his mind,\u201d he writes.<\/p>

The wind acts as this kind of agent of attention in several poems. In \u201cMonologue to an Oatmeal Moon,\u201d the speaker of the poem is locked in \u201cthe unwonder of\/ the current time that killed my friend.\u201d The wind draws his awareness to the scene before him. The speaker says, \u201cThe wind dipped its hand into the back of the lake & stirred\/ a spell I couldn\u2019t look away from.\u201d Like the elemental spirits in Jesmyn Ward\u2019s novel Let Us Descend,<\/em> Collier\u2019s poems animate the natural world before him. The wind, the moon, the dove, the insect: they all become a part of his poetry. Sometimes they speak; sometimes the poetry is directed toward them. A mosquito becomes a character who provides a needed touch. \u201cHow strongly,\u201d the line reads, \u201cI\u2019d been thirsting\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 for something breathing to taste me.\u201d In \u201cAfter the Bonfire,\u201d the speaker says,<\/p>

I heard the gulf mumble to itself.
The words from its salt-filled mouth, reverberating.
It said it was tired of amassing
the names of lifeless things:
dented cans of Bud, \u00a0\u00a0 Marlboros, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 bodies.<\/p>

I felt the same way. I never told you, but it was all there.<\/p>

Like the gulf before him, the speaker writes that he himself is tired of being a tomb. \u201cI\u2019m a stone mausoleum at all times,\u201d he says in \u201cIt Follows.\u201d Grief and loss are not only experienced and observed by the speaker of the poems, but held within the poet\u2019s physical frame, and the frame he offers the reader.<\/p>

But Greater Ghost <\/em>is not willing to let death have the last word, nor is the book willing to relinquish honesty. In the poem \u201cWhen My Days Fill with Ghosts,\u201d the speaker contends with the death of another person he knew, \u201chow his low voice now exists only in memory.\u201d Collier\u2019s poetry acknowledges widespread Black death, but his poems are eulogies against erasure. In remembering his own with humility and honesty, he offers dignity and justice to the many lost, subtly restoring their presence and humanity and individuality. The work of these poems is integral to the health of our society and country\u2014Collier is a critical American voice.<\/p>

And the wounds and losses don\u2019t stop: a bullet hits the heart of someone the speaker cares for (\u201cit broke through all the fine china in his chest\u201d), a girl is missing and the poet searches for her by a river, a friend is dead and illuminated only by the light of twenty-seven photos the narrator keeps of her on his computer. Poems scattered across the collection mourn a devastating miscarriage and its aftermath. In \u201cLamentation,\u201d a poem with four quatrains and eight rotating lines, the speaker asks, in the face of such tragedy on earth, \u201cHow do we survive night, if not by faith the bone light will come?\u201d Illuminating the edges of the painful losses is a sliver of hope. The speaker waits attentively for its arrival like an unseen dawning that will come from beyond himself and the painful world he can see. He references the gospel hymn, \u201cPrecious Lord,\u201d that Mahalia Jackson sang at Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s funeral. \u201cLead me on to the light,\u201d the song goes.<\/p>

Interestingly, the speaker is rarely drawn to respond to all this death with violence (he refuses to kill even a mosquito). He transmutes pain into prayer and unbounded pleasure: he reaches for God, for meaning, for alcohol and touch, for memory-making with kin. At certain points, Collier\u2019s poetry reminded me of Dave Matthews\u2019s rendition<\/a> of the well-known line from Ecclesiastes: \u201cEat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Life may be transient, but these poems are not. They will remain a witness.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The poems invoke a hope for a God who sits above these agonizing tragedies. In \u201cBenediction for the Black & Young,\u201d the poem reads,<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let us pray
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 there is a just God<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 at the end of all this.\u00a0\u00a0 Let us pray
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He sees the columns of our dead
on the sour buds of the street, pray He stirs & says enough. <\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let us pray
The booze that drags us from one day to the next doesn\u2019t run out,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 pray the Hennessy & Crown stays put,<\/p>

pray we do the same sane & intact. [\u2026]<\/p>

Let us bow our heads & dream
a life that loves us better. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 May it be gold-hued.<\/p>

In one haunting poem, \u201cThe Men in My Family Disappeared,\u201d the speaker recounts a basketball game before yet another funeral. Basketball, in the presence of unpacifiable death, becomes a space of laughter and play and resistance. \u201c[I]n the South,\u201d the poem reads, \u201cwe sacred all we can to stay living, holy what is ours\/ before some rabid hand wrestles it away.\u201d There is no question that \u201csome rabid hand\u201d will come. The reality of death is definitively over the game and the \u201ctruth of the hearse.\u201d Then men have disappeared to play, but the title evokes the morbid truth that the men of his family, and beloved people around the speaker, are also all disappearing from life. \u201cI\u2019ve yet to stop feeling the roots dying beneath my feet,\u201d the final poem in the collection concludes.<\/p>

The visceral pains recorded in Greater Ghost <\/em>are compounded by the temporality of the speaker himself. For the poet is not only experiencing the roots of his family tree dying, but he is also personally feeling the way that death mocks him. Throughout the book, he\u2019s almost killed in a car crash, he wonders if he will die in a fever, his unborn child is lost. Every friend and relative that dies is not only a crushing personal loss, but \u00ad\u00adalso a stark reminder of his own transience and mortality, of his ability to record and experience and witness.<\/p>

In his poem \u201cMercutio,\u201d the speaker reveals how awful the tragedies have been. He\u2019s referencing particularly, it seems, the miscarriage, but the intensity of that loss seems to refract all the wounds he\u2019s been invisibly carrying within his own person. He writes,<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I knew the wound ran deeper than I let on
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 when it first appeared, but
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I kept the truth in
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 as long as I could.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I carried the horror & wore it in such a manner
no one knew where I\u2019d been or what had been taken from me.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I could sprint no longer or stay beyond its reach,
my damage brought me wholly into its den & pinned me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

The poet offers a window into the trickster nobleman\u2019s interior life, the responsibility Mercutio feels to keep everyone jovial and content, with glasses and hearts overflowing. And Mercutio is an apt character for Collier to work with. Many of his poems are filled with a love of pleasure, sensory touch, and drink. Samuel Johnson once wrote<\/a>, \u201cMercutio\u2019s wit, gaiety, and courage will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life.\u201d The speaker of the poem relates to Mercutio\u2019s desire to pretend the wound is not as bad as it seems. But, in fact, it\u2019s worse. A child has been \u201cthieved\u201d from him and his partner. Ghosts surround him. The living, and his own life, are all terribly temporal, subject at any moment to the rabid hand of systemic evil and death. Mercutio\u2019s wound is fatal, but the poet goes on living\u2014yet he is transformed. A part of the speaker dies, is \u201cperforated\u201d by all this loss.<\/p>

In Collier\u2019s Greater Ghost, <\/em>the individual lives treated, living and dead, become precious under the poet\u2019s treatment and emotional capacity. Like Romeo and Juliet, <\/em>there is no happy ending\u2014only wounds, wonder, grief, and a lot of love. In the midst of pain and death, the poet sings his song. Life may be transient, but these poems are not. They will remain a witness to tragedy and to the reason we make art, to speak through the sorrow and point to the miraculous gift of life itself.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Alice Courtright<\/strong> is a poet and writer living in New York with her family. She is ordained in the Episcopal Church and her writing has been recently published in The Hedgehog Review <\/em>and Mockingbird<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Greater Ghost<\/strong> was published by Four Way Books on September 15, 2024. Fare Forward<\/em> appreciates the provision of an advance copy to our reviewer. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christian Collier\u2019s debut poetry collection brings together grief, transience, and the beautiful fragility of life and love. Review by Alice 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