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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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Book Review: Willy Loman's Reckless Daughter by Elizabeth Powell

Elizabeth A. I. Powell
Willy Loman's Reckless Daughter
Anhinga Press, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943977-16-1 
$20.00 paperback


Elizabeth A. I. Powell is the author of “The Republic of Self” a New Issue First Book Prize winner, selected by C.K. Williams. Her second book Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances won the Robert Dana Prize in poetry, chosen by Maureen Seaton, and will be published by Anhinga Press in 2016. In 2013, she won a Pushcart Prize. Powell has also received a Vermont Council on the Arts grants and a Yaddo fellowship. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, Harvard Review, Handsome, Hobart, Indiana Review, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Slope, Sugarhouse Review, Ploughshares, Post Road, and elsewhere. She is Editor of Green Mountains Review, and Associate Professor of Writing and Literature at Johnson State College. She also serves on the faculty of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing and Publishing. Born in New York City, she has lived in Vermont since 1989.
. 

Review

A Review of Elizabeth Powell's Willy Loman's Reckless Daughter by Steven Seum
 
From the onset, Elizabeth A.I. Powell’s Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: or Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances questions the reality of the words on the page and the understanding of the world in which we exist. While each poem enhances the narrative of the next, Powell creates a work of literature than can be picked up at your leisure or read in an entire sitting. At times there is both freedom and structure to the words on the page, while at other times the poems are crafted with narrative reminiscent of a short story.  Powell uses Death of a Salesman as a model for framing her poetry in life, death, and actuality.  Her statement of the unspoken parallel of the absent versus the known is representative in her questions of truth and the implications of the obscure.  Carrying across the idea of a dual existence, there is always the question of who? She writes:
So, I say it.  My double, my sister: we are engaging in an energy
event.  I am disassociating into you.  God is an actor acting on us: You
are inventing me and I am inventing you.  Where have you been?  I say.
Where have you been? You say.
The stories make the reader marvel whether she or the other may be the motivation for the manifestation and creation of literature, drama, and life. Always questioning, Powell tackles death’s totality and truth of the effects of a non-existence as she writes, “The object of our attention is this dream that turns out to be real./ The object of our attention is at once the object of our attention and also ourselves.” Her prose continually treats the external and the internal, challenging us to ignore the truth of their present duality.  She continues later writing, “[s]ometimes you try to deny my existence, but today please come/flying so we may live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”  She never allows us to forget the designs and intentions of the interwoven thematic issues of the absent and the known when she asks the other to come flying with her into imaginary circumstances. 

There is a culmination of imaginary circumstance as Powell ends her book with its namesake, “Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter,” as structure and rhyme are birthed from the chaos and questioning that have lead up to this final act.  She tackles this idea from the viewpoint of a child of passion, this unknown bastard, she writes, “O, Willy Loman, I’m your reckless daughter, your memento mori./ I’ll never be a character in your authorized story,/the one that brought you fame.”  The continued treatment of truth versus authenticity is maintained as we see this unfamiliar personality treat Willy Loman as a construction of veracity.  He is the known and the glorified while she is the unknown and the repressed.  This idea of questioning true existence begins with the first poem of the book and culminates into the stunning final magnum opus.  As the book ends, there is no doubt we are sold on the idea of this creation, this unwritten circumstance of Willy Loman’s implied indiscretions of infidelity.  It is the birth of the unreal, a question of authenticity, and a depth of meaning to a story we may have not known.  The reader is left mourning for the loss of someone whose entire existence is a question of authenticity and repression.  Powell’s poems whisper quietly in our ears, challenging us to deny this unwritten reality.
​

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​Steven Seum is a recent transfer student to Lewis University.  He has recently returned to college after a fifteen year hiatus to pursue a degree in English Writing.  Currently, he is an assistant editor in Fiction/Nonfiction as well as assistant Book Reviewer and Marketing consultant for the Jet Fuel Review.  In his free time he enjoys relaxing evenings on the couch watching movies with his wife and volunteering for the Watch D.O.G.S (Dads of Great Students) program at his (2) daughter’s school.  His interests include an immersion in a wide variety of movie genres as well as a healthy interest in well-written science fiction and fantasy literature.
​


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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • 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
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      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
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      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
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      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
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