Poetry review â Girls Like Us: Charles Rammelkamp is impressed by the undisguised sense of menace at the heart of Elizabeth Hazenâs poetry
Girls Like Us
Elizabeth Hazen
Alan Squire Publishing
ISBN: 978-1942892-22-9
52 pages $14.99
Who or what, exactly, are âgirls like usâ? The cover of Elizabeth Hazenâs impressive collection shows a little girl as if from a fairy tale with ghoulish monsters lurking in the background, and indeed, that is the main impression one gets from reading these ominously quiet poems. They bristle with alarm, an image of a sort of innocent Disney heroine who is beset by malevolent forces seeking to do her harm. That phrase, âgirls like us,â appears in one form or another in three of the poems, always with threatening undertones. It first shows up in âBlackout,â a 26-line poem that begins:
Blackout is the tear
in your dress. It is flashing
red and blue, the officer
guiding you to the curb.
Blackout is your car
crumpled, time lost between
the bar and this intersection.
Blackout is this crossroads.
The poem goes on like this, one uncomfortable example after another of absence, loss of awareness, loss of control, until it concludes:
Blackout is for girls like us
who can be rearranged.
This is bleak! âGirls like usâ have such a fragile sense of identity. Many of these poems are littered with broken hearts and relationships gone sour, feelings of foreboding and loneliness and vulnerability. The second reference to âgirls like usâ comes in âDiagnosis III,â which highlights the incipient violence lurking everywhere. It begins: âGirls like you, he spat, / his breath laden with smoke / and SvedkaâŠ.ââ It ends: âGirls like / you, he repeated, leaving me / a blank to fill.â You can practically see the girl cowering in the face of the drunken manâs self-righteous indignation, taking the epithet to heart but wondering what in the world provoked it. This blankness, as if a personality erased, recurs in the third poem that alludes to girls-like-us, âLucky Girl,â which ends,
A man says something
about a girl like you and a place
like this, but I canât see
where I am, or who.
The girlâs tenuous self-confidence is on display in the very first verses of this ironically named poem â âEveryone reassures me that Iâm not / as bad as the worst thing / Iâve doneâŠ.â
âGirls like usâ are filled with doubt. (âThe Bereavedâ includes the lines, âIt was doubt // that first defined existence. Time itself / makes no assertion.â) They struggle for a sense of purpose, crave validation in love, seek a true impression of their character. The thing is, arenât we all like that? Hazenâs poems root out a core impulse and yearning common to so many of us, in our most secret self-assessments â in dreams, where we can no longer hide from ourselves, as if poking a sensitive tooth with the tongue to feel the pain.
The childâs game of Hide and Seek is a metaphor that recurs in these poems. The vulnerability of being alone in bed also recurs as an image, when you are face to face with your doubts (âAfter He Calls Me a Low-Hanging Fruit,â âMonster,â ââTaps, August 1984,â âFree Fall,â âDreamâ). To sum up, the poem âJust Thingsâ ends,
The universe is riddled with fists
false logic, eggshells, viscera, regret.
Am I forgiven? Will you answer that?
Can anyone tell me what Iâm meant to do?
But Hazen is also playful and subtle in exploring these themes of savagery and exposure. The very first poem, âDevices,â is a lesson in prosody whose illustrations make their point. âRhyme relies on repetition:â the poem begins, âpink drink / big wig, tramp stamp, rank skank.â Alliteration, metaphor, assonance (âhot bod, dumb slut, frigid bitch.â), all illustrated with these demeaning phrases. Metonymy, synecdoche, which âreduces
a thing to a single part: he wants pussy,
by which we must infer he wants a woman.
Weâve been called so many things that we are not,
we startle at the sound of our own names.
Other poems likewise have an almost roguish tone while exploring violent images. âScene from a Horror Movieâ describes a ruthless killer attacking a partly naked woman, but we understand all along that this isnât âreal.â The poem ends, âA gasp like hard candy / catches in my throat.â The sonnet entitled âWhy I Love Zombie Woman #6â also presents an almost balletic description of violence, from the movies. We know from the title that this is an inconsequential extra in a B film, but Hazen raises her to heroic levels. Why does she love this character?
Because when she lies in pieces, inside out,
she will not know regret, or shame, or doubt.
Most of the poems in Girls Like Us are written in short, two- or three-line stanzas, which emphasize the spare, elemental quality of Hazenâs work. Sometimes they are written in rhyming couplets (âAddictâ) or follow other rhyme schemes (âAlignmentâ â ABBA) which also tends to accentuate their direct, artful messages. In other words, thereâs not a lot of clutter. She gets right to the point, the heart of the matter. And there is indeed a great deal of heart to the matter.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Jack Tarâs Lady Parts, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, was recently published by FutureCycle Press. An e-chapbook has also recently been published online Time Is on My Side (yes it is) âhttp://poetscoop.org/manuscrip/Time%20Is%20on%20My%20Side%20FREE.pdf Â
Another chapbook, Mortal Coil, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing. Two full-length collections are forthcoming in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books.
London Grip Poetry Review – Elizabeth Hazen
March 10, 2020
Poetry review â Girls Like Us: Charles Rammelkamp is impressed by the undisguised sense of menace at the heart of Elizabeth Hazenâs poetry
Who or what, exactly, are âgirls like usâ? The cover of Elizabeth Hazenâs impressive collection shows a little girl as if from a fairy tale with ghoulish monsters lurking in the background, and indeed, that is the main impression one gets from reading these ominously quiet poems. They bristle with alarm, an image of a sort of innocent Disney heroine who is beset by malevolent forces seeking to do her harm. That phrase, âgirls like us,â appears in one form or another in three of the poems, always with threatening undertones. It first shows up in âBlackout,â a 26-line poem that begins:
The poem goes on like this, one uncomfortable example after another of absence, loss of awareness, loss of control, until it concludes:
This is bleak! âGirls like usâ have such a fragile sense of identity. Many of these poems are littered with broken hearts and relationships gone sour, feelings of foreboding and loneliness and vulnerability. The second reference to âgirls like usâ comes in âDiagnosis III,â which highlights the incipient violence lurking everywhere. It begins: âGirls like you, he spat, / his breath laden with smoke / and SvedkaâŠ.ââ It ends: âGirls like / you, he repeated, leaving me / a blank to fill.â You can practically see the girl cowering in the face of the drunken manâs self-righteous indignation, taking the epithet to heart but wondering what in the world provoked it. This blankness, as if a personality erased, recurs in the third poem that alludes to girls-like-us, âLucky Girl,â which ends,
The girlâs tenuous self-confidence is on display in the very first verses of this ironically named poem â âEveryone reassures me that Iâm not / as bad as the worst thing / Iâve doneâŠ.â
âGirls like usâ are filled with doubt. (âThe Bereavedâ includes the lines, âIt was doubt // that first defined existence. Time itself / makes no assertion.â) They struggle for a sense of purpose, crave validation in love, seek a true impression of their character. The thing is, arenât we all like that? Hazenâs poems root out a core impulse and yearning common to so many of us, in our most secret self-assessments â in dreams, where we can no longer hide from ourselves, as if poking a sensitive tooth with the tongue to feel the pain.
The childâs game of Hide and Seek is a metaphor that recurs in these poems. The vulnerability of being alone in bed also recurs as an image, when you are face to face with your doubts (âAfter He Calls Me a Low-Hanging Fruit,â âMonster,â ââTaps, August 1984,â âFree Fall,â âDreamâ). To sum up, the poem âJust Thingsâ ends,
But Hazen is also playful and subtle in exploring these themes of savagery and exposure. The very first poem, âDevices,â is a lesson in prosody whose illustrations make their point. âRhyme relies on repetition:â the poem begins, âpink drink / big wig, tramp stamp, rank skank.â Alliteration, metaphor, assonance (âhot bod, dumb slut, frigid bitch.â), all illustrated with these demeaning phrases. Metonymy, synecdoche, which âreduces
Other poems likewise have an almost roguish tone while exploring violent images. âScene from a Horror Movieâ describes a ruthless killer attacking a partly naked woman, but we understand all along that this isnât âreal.â The poem ends, âA gasp like hard candy / catches in my throat.â The sonnet entitled âWhy I Love Zombie Woman #6â also presents an almost balletic description of violence, from the movies. We know from the title that this is an inconsequential extra in a B film, but Hazen raises her to heroic levels. Why does she love this character?
Most of the poems in Girls Like Us are written in short, two- or three-line stanzas, which emphasize the spare, elemental quality of Hazenâs work. Sometimes they are written in rhyming couplets (âAddictâ) or follow other rhyme schemes (âAlignmentâ â ABBA) which also tends to accentuate their direct, artful messages. In other words, thereâs not a lot of clutter. She gets right to the point, the heart of the matter. And there is indeed a great deal of heart to the matter.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Jack Tarâs Lady Parts, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, was recently published by FutureCycle Press. An e-chapbook has also recently been published online Time Is on My Side (yes it is) âhttp://poetscoop.org/manuscrip/Time%20Is%20on%20My%20Side%20FREE.pdf Â
Another chapbook, Mortal Coil, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing. Two full-length collections are forthcoming in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books.