Reviewed by Diane R. Wiener
Content Warning: Social violence, suicide, myriad forms of oppression, explicit references to political ideology and U. S. political history
When writing book reviews, I often find myself drawn to the word “unapologetic.” Sometimes I use this word to describe an author’s approaches and candor, but I do not want to over-use it, to be sure. Simultaneously, I tend to disprefer the prefix “over-” due to its frequent usage for misogynistic purposes, as in: over-sensitive, overreacting, and so on. I have been known to quip without irony that I am “over” the prefix’s fraught applications.
In Alternative Hollywood Ending, Heather Taylor-Johnson is, indeed, “over” the aforementioned frameworks, too. She is, moreover, vastly unapologetic. This poetry collection will not be in alignment with all of our Wordgathering readership, as the poems present an explicit indictment of mainstream American politics, particularly on the so-called right, and specifically in the context of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Taylor-Johnson moved to Australia from the U.S. over 25 years ago to pursue her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Adelaide. She is a widely published author and reviewer across genres. Dedicated to the poet’s “American sisters and brothers,” Alternative Hollywood Ending is a clarion call for transparency and an assertive commitment to poetry as testimonial activism through abstracted and direct aesthetic means.
In the first piece, “What if I Write a Poem?” the poet asks, “What if America implodes in the biggest display of fireworks / the world has ever seen?” An expat arguably has anxieties with which I am not directly familiar, but/and I have an understanding as a friend to people who once lived “here” and now live “elsewhere.” Even if I had no idea what the poet meant in this and accompanying lines, I would (and do) feel the dread and distress in the verbiage, including “implodes” as a reference to fireworks–an explosion turned inward. The poem has a series of questions about consumerism, everyday life, self-care, and other topics, and ends with the question, “What if I say yes?” This affirmation offered as an unapologetic (!) challenge is a stylistic convention presented in various ways throughout the remainder of the book.
In “Motion/Stasis,” there are references to the natural world as idiomatic, rendering choice and power in concert with “struggle”:
The other side of happiness is where the hard work’s done.
yesterday it was a beetle on its back, I didn’t want to touch it so I dragged its struggle inside of me instead, and the statue
of a woman’s head with resting eyes lying sideways in our garden, it tipped over months ago and I can’t bring myself to set it upright. Each small drama bleeds into the daily grind – I sweep this one
into the corner, I pour that one down the drain.
Like the imploding fireworks, the poet has “dragged” the beetle’s “struggle inside of me instead,” as we learn about the tipped over “statue of a woman’s head with resting eyes.” Her eyes are not resting in the relaxed sense of the word, of course (although a misogynist or a misguided onlooker might think “she” looks so serene and pretty). The poet is tired and worn out, beyond annoyed, and thus choosing her proverbial battles. As a consequence of the other poems in the collection, even when “Motion/Stasis” is read alone, I interpret the statue-as-poet-extension in the book’s context.
Put differently, the statue/poet is deeply and appropriately enraged at having been repeatedly disrupted by antagonism, frustrated by having to keep doing “the hard work,” with decades of prior (arguably, previously “successful”) labors questioned and stripped at every turn. I “hear” you, poet. Roe v. Wade was challenged, overturned, and “lost”; Trans rights are being undermined continuously and brutally; sexism and gender oppression parade around like alleged forces of nature, co-mingling strategically with myriad oppressive practices including, obviously, relentless ableist, racist actions, since all of these oppressions are interconnected. While Taylor-Johnson does not address all of these matters in the poems, her commitment to fighting sexism is abundantly clear. What she offers supported me as a reader in making the other “connections” noted herein.
Taylor-Johnson knows that a female representation, a not-stoic statue (having previously believed itself to have been solid…), didn’t get pushed over by a merely strong wind. The beetle has been upended and needs interiorized protection. So does the statue; but the poet is tired.
Marginalized people are in danger and the poet is “full of anger.” There is an “everyman” quality to this particular poem with which I do not identify, as when the poet says, “I can’t believe anyone’s different from me, dragging around their business / wherever they go.” What I found more relatable and disturbing were the lines about internalized oppression. The poem references guilt, distress, and suicide, using graphic imagery. The very difficult while vivid and real references to self-harms having been influenced strongly by the internalization of societal harms rang true. Social oppression can be fatal.
In contrast, “Close to Home” includes some pastoral scenery mixed with grief, loss, and wistful recollection. In these lines at the poem’s conclusion, different kinds of hope, pain, and heartache co-mingle:
Tell me you feel the ripple too – a leaf fallen by the breeze,
a dog’s bark shaking the surface of the lake and the oofta vibration that it makes, an oar lifted by our son coaxing out the water’s words, like uncovering a memory then stowing it again.The lake hears our stories too, drowns in every one.
In “The Harvest,” “The Ice,” and elsewhere, there are evocations of love and still more grief. There is erotic content throughout the collection too, and present, as well, are the many flavors of a long and healing marital alliance and the salve of having loving family and friends.
In the following words from “The Ice,” one finds a bittersweet evocation as the poet “found language in the water’s hushing / vowels – this ice is something new.” In this example and others, there are moments of lightness and beauty co-occurring within an otherwise often brutal, cold water of poetic imagery. In these respects, one of my favorite works is the short poem, “Toward Pak Ou,” which I quote entirely below:
Trust in the current of this slow brown river to carry you through the day. Follow bamboo floating by like the future, both with purpose and without.
Know that beyond the mountains are more, and the same river, its plastic-bag baubles and white birds.
Villagers wave you on your way, wearing the river like old and worn sandals, like shorts that slip to their hips, like shade across their shoulders.
Armies, patriotism, fading spiritedness, and penal codes are juxtaposed with lovely anniversaries, conversations with offspring, and, as noted, the pastoral. Privilege is referenced and so is its loss. Taylor-Johnson’s explicit language about genitals (often employed by quoting and paraphrasing Donald Trump as a prior American president), war, brutality, suicide, and oppression will not be for everyone. I found the collection riveting and honest albeit disturbing. (Yes, it is unapologetic. And I too prefer transparency.)
In “Sick-Ass Love,” the poet likewise reminds the addressee, and therefore her readers:
There was also the soft and the sleep.
There was also the hold and the keep.
Title: Alternative Hollywood Ending
Author: Heather Taylor-Johnson
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Year: 2022
Back to Top of Page | Back to Volume 17, Issue 2s – Spring 2024
About the Reviewer
Diane R. Wiener (she/they) became Editor-in-Chief of Wordgathering in January 2020. The author of The Golem Verses (Nine Mile Press, 2018), Flashes & Specks (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and The Golem Returns (swallow::tale press, 2022), Diane’s poems also appear in Nine Mile Magazine, Wordgathering, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Diagrams Sketched on the Wind, Jason’s Connection, the Kalonopia Collective’s 2021 Disability Pride Anthology, eMerge, and elsewhere. Diane’s creative nonfiction appears in Stone Canoe, Mollyhouse, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, Pop the Culture Pill, and eMerge. Her flash fiction appears in Ordinary Madness; short fiction is published in A Coup of Owls. Diane served as Nine Mile Literary Magazine’s Assistant Editor after being Guest Editor for the Fall 2019 Special Double Issue on Neurodivergent, Disability, Deaf, Mad, and Crip poetics. She has published widely on Disability, education, accessibility, equity, and empowerment, among other subjects. A proud Neuroqueer, Mad, Crip, Genderqueer, Ashkenazi Jewish Hylozoist Nerd, Diane is honored to serve in the nonprofit sector. You can visit Diane online at: https://dianerwiener.com.