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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
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    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
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      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
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      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
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      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
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      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
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      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
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    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
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Book Review: Everyone Who Is Dead by David Welch

Everyone Who Is Dead
David Welch
Spork Press
2018
978-1-948510-14-1
70 Pages
$18.00


David Welch is the author of Everyone Who Is Dead (Spork Press, 2018) and a chapbook, It Is Such a Good Thing to Be In Love with You (The Laurel Review/Midwest Chapbook Series, 2015). He is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Welch lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University where he is Assistant Director of Publishing & Outreach. 


Review





















A Review of David Welch's Everyone Who Is Dead

Everyone Who Is Dead lures the reader down the rabbit hole, and when they resurface on the other end, they are surrounded by a flourishing Earth and well-dressed animals. Through the catalyst of nature and a varying cast of woodland creatures, David Welch paints strange, picturesque scenes that the reader can get lost in. Natural beauty is shown with images like “the orchid, its mouth a blushed pear, its green legs / thrown over the ground where the audience sifted their hands together,” which is complimented by the interactions of “the boy” and “the audience,” the recurring characters that are seen throughout Welch’s collection.
 
The relationship of these two characters often forge a philosophical element, as the ever-questioning audience is constantly examining “the boy.” In the poem, “Everyone Who Is Dead,” “the audience” acts as an observer that is seeking answers out of “the boy’s” actions:

The audience saw the boy in the distance
discussing what they did not know, as if entering
into the boat at his feet might take him somewhere
soft, a ladle of milk cooling into an empty glass.
The interactions of “the boy” and “the audience” create a dynamism that seems as though Welch is scraping at the fourth wall, using “the audience” as an inclusion of the reader as they seem to be watching a performance act out on a stage of flora, fauna, and other wildlife.  In “Lives of the Rabbits,” nature is molded into a breathing organism that includes all elements living as one:
must we accept also the green
life of the bird on the tree, how it looks like a leaf
as it pales, the color no longer localized, no longer
waiting in the wings where the havoc of blood blues
against the feathered root.

The bird in these lines illustrates another limb of the tree and, throughout the poem, the reader is met with a vivid world of life and death. The elegance of nature that is sculpted throughout the poetry is contrasted by the presence of violence and death that integrates seamlessly into the lines to add to the poignancy of the world. In “As If at Its End,” this integration is created with subtlety:
like a boy left to drift alone toward the sea
looking for the lower lights and the prisms of jellyfish
 
the softsexed bodies inking themselves into the dark
In the sea the boy said   mustn’t one look always forward
 
for the shore    as if without a lighthouse
 
the blood slowing in the fog 

The mixing, and juxtaposition, of unexpected images like the “prisms of jellyfish” and the sinister, yet still mystical, images of “blood slowing in the fog” converge together on the page creating a profoundness to Welch’s poetry. The clever blending of light and dark illustrations parallel the complex settings and characters within the collection.
 
Everyone Who Is Dead is a striking read that snags the reader and guides them on a journey through bustling forests, deep seas, and the kaleidoscope of emotions that all these sublime elements generate. It is a prismatic and substantive read with a sophisticated narrative that calls for the reader to walk its trails over and over again.


Picture

​

Zachary Klozik is an undergraduate at Lewis University, studying English and Film Studies. He resides in New Lenox, Illinois and is the poetry editor for Jet Fuel Review. He has been published in Windows Fine Arts Magazine and he is also an amateur filmmaker and board game designer.​

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  • Home
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022
  • Issue #25 Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Art Spring 2023 >
      • David Carter Spring 2023
      • Annabel Jung Spring 2023
      • Ryota Matsumoto Spring 2023
      • Leah Oates Spring 2023
      • Eve Ozer Spring 2023
      • Emily Rankin Spring 2023
      • Esther Yeon Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Poetry Spring 2023 >
      • Emma Bolden Spring 2023
      • Ronda Piszk Broatch Spring 2023
      • M. Cynthia Cheung Spring 2023
      • Flower Conroy Spring 2023
      • Jill Crammond Spring 2023
      • Sandra Crouch Spring 2023
      • Satya Dash Spring 2023
      • Rita Feinstein Spring 2023
      • Dan Fliegel Spring 2023
      • Lisa Higgs ​Spring 2023
      • Dennis Hinrichsen ​Spring 2023
      • Mara Jebsen ​Spring 2023
      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
      • Susanna Lang ​Spring 2023
      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
      • Matthew Murrey Spring 2023
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
      • Wesley Sexton ​Spring 2023
      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
      • Sara Sowers-Wills ​Spring 2023
      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
      • Elinor Ann Walker Spring 2023
      • Andrew Wells Spring 2023
      • Erin Wilson Spring 2023
      • Marina Hope Wilson ​Spring 2023
      • David Wojciechowski Spring 2023
      • Jules Wood Spring 2023
      • Ellen Zhang Spring 2023
      • BJ Zhou Spring 2023
      • Jane Zwart Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
      • Eleonora Balsano Spring 2023
      • Callie S. Blackstone Spring 2023
      • Daniel Deisinger Spring 2023
      • CL Glanzing Spring 2023
      • Janine Kovac Spring 2023
      • Jeremy T. Wilson Spring 2023
      • Richie Zaborowske Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
      • Kalie Johnson Spring 2023
      • Amanda Roth Spring 2023