Review of Ali Whitelock’s “a brief letter to the sea about a couple of things”

REVIEW OF ALI WHITELOCK’S a brief letter to the sea about a couple of things 

by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

In Ali Whitelock’s genre-bending, uproarious third collection of poetry, a brief letter to the sea, right off I was gob smacked that this uber-contemporary poet wrote a Dear Reader” passage. Who besides the Victorians such as Dickens and Fielding included a direct address to the reader? And in that letter, she gives the purpose of poetry.

“As our legs buckle under the biggest pile of shite god ever shat out, some say poetry is the answer.”

She concludes that poetry isn’t an answer, but in a world so endangered and wrong-headed, poetry makes the six o’clock news kill her a little less, and it’s a way to preserve some part of herself. That’s what each of her poems do. They scan the world with her satirist eyes, decry and confess, and leave you with indelible moments of tragedy and hilarity.

Although writing in a down-to-the-gritty-earth manner, Whitelock is an intellectual who takes a sidelong, but critical look at everything from the bible to Camus to Lucien Freud and other visual artists. In love in the time of celery, the title a nod to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s enduring, Love in the Time of Cholera, she writes her own heart wrenching love story about her husband that takes place in the time of Covid. In brief strokes, she tells us his history as a migrant earning his way as a poorly paid laborer who came to this country with “no inglés, pas d’anglais, ich spreche kein englisch. with time he taught me how to be kind in three different languages.”

In the town, let us admit, is ugly, she borrows a line from Camus’ The Plague, which was all the rage during Covid. The Plague is one of those must-reads for intellectuals. I had to read it in my college French class. I didn’t understand it, so I read it in English too. I still didn’t understand it, but never admitted to it. But Whitelock writes, “to be honest i found the story slower than the meserve glacier, duller than the last flicker of the imaginary candle i refuse to hold to it—am i even allowed to say that?”

How ironic to use the biblical quote from Judges [6:12] & the angel of the lord appeared to him & said, ‘the lord is with you, O mighty man of valourL” for a poem about the violence her father wrought on her mother. Whitelock is impassioned about the damage being done to our planet. She doesn’t rail against it like a prophet, but brings the reader images that make you want to go out and singlehandedly take on the task of cleaning up the mess we’ve made. “otters hold hands to stop drifting apart in the sea, …cows produce the most milk listening to REM’s everybody hurts. Or this one—“i remember when a collapsing ice shelf meant too many dinners stacked in the freezer.”

Nothing prepares us for the terror of it will start innocently enough, with the ovarian cyst. that turns out to be an excruciating tale of medical indifference to womens’ pain along with a harrowing story of personal suffering.

She casts her wit on politics as well. Such a surprise to me when she rails against “liberal” climate deniers when in the U.S., liberals are all in on protecting our planet. Whitelock uses footnotes to tell us who the villains are, so the book is fore an international reader. And you don’t have to guess who her poem, grabbing a coke & a pussy with you. Our former president who left his spoor on the world during his reign of mobster-ism, and has yet to stop.

In Dear Reader, Whitelock slyly claims that she’s programmed these poems to whisper to you at night like a family-sized bar of white chocolate calling to you from the pantry when you are trying to reduce your carbs. Let yourself take the bite of these forbidden poems. Let them melt in your mouth. The flavor, I assure you, will last through many tooth-brushings.

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Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is the author of Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster). Her essays have appeared in The NYT (Lives), Newsweek, and many other magazines and anthologies. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Shapiro has published poetry in Moment, The Iowa Review, Permafrost, and Harpur Palette. Her poetry collection, Death, Please Wait, is forthcoming from Box Turtle Press. Currently, she teaches at UCLA Extension. Find her at https://rochellejshapiro.com/ and @rjshapiro

ALI WHITELOCK

WAKEFIELD PRESS, 2023

ISBN 978 1 74305 9722

83 pp.

www.wakefieldpress.com.eu