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What Happens Is Neither
By: Angela Narciso Torres
Published: February 15, 2021
Price: $16.95
110 Pages. Four Way Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-69-3


Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange (Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry, 2013), To the Bone (Sundress Publications, 2020), and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Recent work appears in Poetry, Missouri Review, and Quarterly West. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She won the 2019 Yeats Poetry Prize (W.B. Yeats Society of New York) and was named one of NewCityLit’s Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago in 2016. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry. She lives in Southern California.
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Review


























A Review of Angela Narciso Torres' What Happens is Neither
 

Often, our lives are defined by our memories; places we have been and people we have known; decisions and mistakes made; spoken and unspoken words; the lives of friends and loved ones long after they are gone. How we remember each of these things defines who we are in the present, and how we will be in the future, whether they are happy or sad. For her third book, Angela Narciso Torres uses these feelings to create formal and free verse poems that illustrate a beautiful tapestry of memories stitched together through family bonds, country, and mourning. 

Torres begins with a dedication, writing, “for Carmen Tanesco Narciso 13 September 1936 – 27 May 2019 and Francisco Villaruz Narciso 2 October 1935 – 7 June 2019” setting the tone for readers that the poems held in their hands tell the story of her own loss, the reminiscing of her mother and father, who passed away mere weeks apart from Alzheimer’s and cancer, respectively. Torres challenges readers to remember loved ones as they were in the past, rather than their deaths: to celebrate the lives they lived and to cope with the grief brought by their passing:
I remember brownouts. Melted wax
cooling against my scar. How it
formed a pebbled lake bed.
 
Decades ago we spread blankets
on our parents’ bedroom floor. I fell asleep
watching my beautiful mother sleep.
 
Cloaked in her frayed bathrobe, her guava
scent, I clutched my fears like lost teeth
then let them slip down the drain
Above, Torres writes about her mother’s scent, the guava fruit, as she recalls a memory of younger days in “Recuerdo a Mi Madre,” giving pause to the reader as she delves into a rollercoaster of emotion, as the poem is read in vignettes that allude to the senses, filling the nose with the scent of lavender candles wafting about, before an incident involving her mother takes center stage, followed by her father’s quick action: “Called an ambulance. / Her silence an explosive / he’d learned to detonate.” ​Her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease is referenced throughout the book, with many poems speaking of Torres’ own pain of living through it alongside her father, who would play his violin until her mother slept. Even though she no longer recognizes him, he remains a rock beside her despite his own battle with cancer. 

​Part of Torres’ brilliance in these poems is in how she weaves together old mementos of her parents, recalling even the tiniest details in her stunning imagery that can send shockwaves of emotion through time such as in “Watch”:
Here in these cracked
walls of mortar and wood,
of mother’s daily erasures
and father’s thinning
wrists—here in this
reluctant drawer
 
rests my father’s watch
its gold weave band
gone from amber to
dun, the latch empurpled
to iridescent plum. The time
 
is always 5:17, the second
hand still at forty-two
One can almost hold the watch in their hand as they read the poem, and perhaps some have also held an object of similar meaning to them, relating to the time it stopped ticking, yet the symphony continues to beat against time just as the heart does. This same play with mementos is seen throughout the book, particularly her father’s violin, which appears in several other poems. This recurring theme carries with it a sense of standing at the crossroads between life and death, old belongings and lessons breathing life back into a loved one that has long passed on, so that in a way, they are never truly gone, only carried forward in spirit by those who remain.

​Torres also writes about her own experiences as a mother, including the difficulty of carrying a pregnancy to term, and how swiftly tragedy can strike, the poem a whirlwind of distraught wonder and accusation: "I blamed the rain    the fried eggplant / the trip to the mall    blamed my past selfish ways" as described in “To the One We Lost,” a lamentation for miscarriage. The idea of breastfeeding is also touched on in “Ode to the Areola,” and “The Foul Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart,” a Golden Shovel borrowing a line from William Butler Yeats:
I’m not just talking about the
sleepless days and nights, the nonstop nursing, the foul-
smelling diapers. I’m talking of how my body reeked, a soaked rag
of curdled milk, drool, and leaky nappies; &
how I’d wake already beat beyond blood, bone
& breath, the babe still at my breast. But when I pushed past a shop-
window the other day, I turned to do a double-take: a glimmer of
a woman I once knew. No, it wasn’t just the
wind-tossed hair, the morning-weary face. But oh, the heart, the heart!
The poem tells readers that motherhood is both a rewarding and fierce challenge, that it is as much of a battle as it is a joyous journey, and Torres utilizes these gritty displays to eloquently create a connection between the romanticized and the natural, and the result is hauntingly beautiful. 

With each new poem, the tapestry continues to knit itself together as What Happens is Neither creates a narrative of moving forward as we cope with loss, remembering who our loved ones were and how they lived, forging a glimpse into another reminiscent time seen through small but significant details. Playing upon the senses--especially employing scent and color--to urge readers to reflect, understand, and revise, Angela Narciso Torres has created a powerful collection of poetry that is seamlessly interconnected. Each piece is unique as she attests to the power of revision, memory, and change that can arrive as powerfully as a storm in the ocean. A storm that can destroy what we have so that we must learn how to build back, let go of what was lost and begin again, as Torres concludes in the book's final poem, “The wind rises, rewriting the hymnals of dunes. / I am hurricaned. Worn smooth again."

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Salvador Martinez is an undergraduate studying Political Science and English at Lewis University and is a poetry editor and book review editor for Jet Fuel Review. He enjoys reading poetry, fantasy fiction, science fiction, classical works, and political theory while listening to music on his phonograph, playing one of his guitars, or simply writing prose or poetry.

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