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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
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    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
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Book Review: Only More So by Millicent Borges Accardi

Only More So
Millicent Borges Accardi
Salmon Poetry
2016
978-1-910669-28-0
75 pages
$16.73


Millicent Borges Accardi is the author of Only More So (Salmon Poetry, 2016), Woman on a Shaky Bridge (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and Injuring Eternity (World Nouveau, 2010). Accardi is recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fullbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California Arts Council, and the Barbara Deming Foundation (Money for Women). Accardi has been resident at Yaddo, Milkwood in Cesky Krumlov, Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, Jentel, and Vermont Studio Center. She holds degrees in English literature and writing from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and the University of Southern California (USC). 


Review





















A Review of Millicent Borges Accardi's Only More So

Millicent Borges Accardi’s Only More So is a composition of lyrical poetry. Accardi’s poetic voice connects the collective consciousness of Portuguese women, retelling a history of violence, ethnic cleansing, and trauma. In revisiting a history of war, Accardi’s poems capture the resistance and survival of women, determining a critical exploration of a history that is passed down generations, which is still being processed.
 
In “Ciscenje Prostora (Ethnic Cleansing),” the poem speaks to women who experience the traumatic consequences of war. Accardi displays a soldier’s abuse of power when he sexually assaults the woman in the poem:
She knows not to stare back
when he finds her, hiding behind a clay
pot. When his soldier’s eyes become her
life, more understandable than her or me or any
pronoun she whispers out between no and help,
she shuts her eyes, imagining cold weather.
In relaying the assault, the poem amplifies the woman’s “whisper,” detailing a vicious experience as to say, if society resolves to produce violent men, then that same society deserves to share the uncomfortable moment in observing the retelling of the woman’s rape. Furthermore, even though the speaker is absent in the actions of the poem, she appears as “me,” pointing to a collective consciousness, where the crime against the main woman doesn’t only affect her as an individual, but the brutality becomes consequential to other women facing the same scenario. The speaker’s role as “me” results in a reality where the following generations inherit the trauma their ancestors’ experience. The inherent violence in the word “Ciscenje Prostora (Ethnic Cleansing)” defines casualty as the mission: ​Even little sounds, like birds overhead, / encourage him to go on, to spit, to breathe / three generations of her surrender into his lungs." Although the soldier completes his war mission by destabilizing a woman’s life, Accardi’s poem recognizes the humanity of a survivor’s story: “she thinks not of peace, but of surviving / the winter, of outlasting the enemy, of winning.” Even though the poem provides a voice for the woman, the situation is not resolved, but Accardi emphasizes the significance in illustrating where generational trauma begins as well as where the conversation on identity leads. “Ciscenje Prostora (Ethnic Cleansing)” is by no means an undoing, but a new-beginning, albeit a savage start into the territory of a forced cultural dissemination.
 
Moving into Accardi’s ekphrastic poem, based on Frida Kahlo’s oil painting with the eponymous title “What the Water Gives Me,” Accardi exercises a rhetorical interpretation of Kahlo’s work, offering both a new imagination and meaning to Kahlo’s art. For instance, the speaker makes herself the subject of the piece: “at first it gives heat, burning red angels / on my ankles when the steam from the bath / rushes in.” The subjective approach allows the speaker to adopt the painting’s surrealist metaphors, to speak them literally, indicating a connection between women and this particular experience: 
​[…] My toes kick at the
drowsy skyscrapers in the tub; my arms extend
out for what I see: the women in turbans,
the men with eggshell eyes, the children
with their soft, miscarried faces.
The bath’s water in Kahlo’s “What the Water Gives Me” is a mirror, reflecting memories that cause distress. Accardi’s poem extends the significance of the bath’s water, designating the metaphor as a portal to shared grievances. The surrealist elements point to a juxtaposition between comfort and pain, where both Kahlo and Accardi’s poem show the image of a body attempting to rest in the bath, but the “burning red angles” and “miscarried faces” confront consolation. “What the Water Gives Me” bares agony through a survivor’s perspective, demonstrating a resilience between two separate stories that intertwine at shared experiences and metaphors.
 
Both “Ciscenje Prostora (Ethnic Cleansing)” and “What the Water Gives Me” explore the workings of a collective consciousness, which examine the development of personhood from a direct result of shared history, experience, and even metaphor. Only More So is a collection of lyrical poems that explore the sociological implication of womanhood, culture, and an individual identity reflective to the environment of that individual’s society, presenting emotion and understanding as a crucial, humanistic quality of a person’s reality. Accardi’s poems discuss a variety of conflict that results in generational trauma. Millicent Borges Accardi’s Only More So extends the influence of her poetic voice to share resilience against erasure, surviving even when her poems share a close relationship to loss.  

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Miguel is the Asst. Managing Editor and Book Review Editor for Jet Fuel Review. As an editor, one of his main concerns is giving a space to marginalized voices, centralizing on narratives often ignored. He loves reading radical, unapologetic writers, who explore the emotional and intellectual stresses within political identities and systemic realities. His own writings can be found in OUT / CAST: A Journal of Queer Midwestern Writing and Art, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Rogue Agent. He writes for the Jet Fuel Review blog in Not Your Binary: A QTPOC Reading Column.
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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
      • 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