In WE, April Ossmann’s latest collection of poetry, you’ll find some Upper Valley in the poems, and some echoes of the pandemic, mixed in with politics and meditations on nature and love. The book opens with the following lines: “If I told you/ I saw your soul,/ would you judge me/ inappropriate,/ or disbelieve me?” This single sentence, broken into five lines, hooked me right away. I’m a big fan of the direct address in poems. It feels like she’s speaking to me and yet the title, “Non-Partisan”, suggests that she’s speaking to everyone. This poem is representative of the entire collection, in that it’s both personal and universal at once. As a reader, I felt welcomed.
There’s always something magical about the poet who can see your soul. We all want to be seen. In the same poem, Ossmann goes on to write: “If you asked/ for a description,/ would I admit/ you glowed, golden”. Now I really wanted to be the person Ossmann was speaking to, the person she is seeing. Who doesn’t want a golden glow? The poem ends with the lines: “as if I finally understood/ what beauty meant/ to tell me?”
Because I’m not clear on what beauty means to tell me, I knew from this first poem that I had to read the entire book, right away. Maybe more than once. But first I re-read “Non-Partisan” again. And again. It’s the kind of poem you just want to pitch a tent and live inside. It’s a beautiful scene, entirely made up of two questions. It does what all good first poems should do in a book of poetry: It opens the door.
Inside this collection, the poet succeeds in showing us what beauty means to tell us, through small, ordinary-seeming moments. Ossmann writes “…of hope that shone/ like a lone flashlight/ in a mansion” in the poem “Knee-Deep.” She shows us “as a flock/ of white-uniformed cooks,/ elegant as swans/ on the stained back stoop/ in watery twilight,” in the poem “Eclipse”. In this book you’ll find the pandemic, and a poetic sifting of politics, amidst phrases like “a September reality” and darkness described as “an overcast night/ licorice, ink, ravens, outer space.”
This book rewards the reader who comes to it with an open heart. WE will appear in stores next month but it is available for pre-order. April Ossmann will be reading from WE at The Norwich Bookstore on Friday, April 18, at 7PM. See you there!
Rena J. Mosteirin wrote Experiment 116 (Counterpath press, 2021), Half-Fabulous Whales (Little Dipper, 2019) and Nick Trail’s Thumb (Kore Press, 2008). She is the co-author of Moonbit (punctum books, 2019) an academic and poetic exploration of the Apollo 11 guidance computer code. Mosteirin is an editor at Bloodroot Literary Magazine, teaches creative writing workshops at Dartmouth College and owns Left Bank Books, a used bookstore in Hanover, New Hampshire.