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Book Review: Fruit Mansion by Sam Herschel Wein

Fruit Mansion
Sam Herschel Wein
Split Lip Press
2017
978-1978397415
42 pages
$10


Sam Herschel Wein is a poetry editor for The Blueshift Journal and is co-founder of Underblog. His chapbook Fruit Mansion (Split Lip Press, 2017) was selected as the winner of the 2016 Turnbuckle Chapbook prize. Recent work has appeared in Vinyl Poetry, Pretty Owl Poetry, Connotation Press, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Cotton Xenomorph, and more. 


Review





















A Review of Sam Herschel Wein's Fruit Mansion​

Sam Herschel Wein’s Fruit Mansion is an invitation to bite into the sweet and sour pulp of his poems about space, coming-to-age, sexuality, body, and appetite represented in its many facets. Wein invites hungry readers to the table, where his reoccurring food conceit provides comfort as the uncomfortable is confronted.
 
In Wein’s “Angst in Threes,” the poem speaks to both the actualization and angst that comes with recognizing sexuality: “Everything is sex. I never asked.” The staccato sentences speak to the direct, matter-of-fact realization of the situation. Even in recognizing the situation, the following statements hide a complexity that feels relatable, yet not easily explainable: “I actor / actress. I the part. I playing stage.” The poem’s speaker observes and inherits the behaviors that everyone around exhibits. The observations do not arrive to an explainable analysis, but simply, the speaker accepts the feelings as natural: “Everyone is naked. Just so young. Just so hungry.” The success of “Angst in Threes” is that the poem depicts a natural actualization of sexuality that most people experience, yet any complexity that arises from the subject is a result of the reader’s own projection. Wein presents a simple coming-to-age moment through a direct tone as he allows readers to add the complexity of reaching sexual maturity and their relationship to sexuality.
 
In “Asking for Sugar,” Wein changes the direction and atmosphere of his poems, channeling an uncomfortable confrontation. The poem turns from an appetite for sweetness to the acidic sensation of slit taste buds and gums:
Pink grapefruits,
preciously sweet, a sharp-
edged spoon that is pressure
beyond what the skin can
take; I wanna fuck you
so bad he snarls behind my
gums, his mind a pink
pasty flower gritted
to no petals at
all […]

Wein’s speaker experiences words forced into their mouth, showing the danger in boundaries crossed, which adds importance to consent, even when the words of the speaker are limited. The poem ends on an emotional singe:
[…] a pink so plush
its palpable and pain-
ridden past, take it you
little pussy a mantra for fruits
and breakfast fruits
and cigarettes that don’t
taste like smoke anymore
that don’t taste like
I can eat anymore.  
Wein’s poems interrogate run-ins with homophobia and misogyny that many queer bodies experience, alluding to the internalization that the antagonist of “Asking for Sugar” displays. The disrespect against boundaries and consent is a sign of the complex power dynamics Wein captures in his poem, adding to the uncomfortable, bitter scenario.
 
“Hey Fat Boy” appears after “Asking for Sugar,” sharing the same level of shame that antagonists force out of queer and fat bodies, pressuring marginalized people into internalized feelings. Wein explores desirability politics, and the complexity that comes with bodies that do not adhere to the heteronormative expectations of what a body is supposed to appear and act as. For instance, the second stanza of “Hey Fat Boy” shows how shame results from othering:

bet if he asked you to be skinny, boy,
if he pulled
at your sides, needled a trampoline,
bet you would stop eating the arms
off the chair ‘cuz you were still
hungry, the napkins hurled afterwards
            out of shame
The unhealthy outcome of body-shaming leads the subject of the poem to a general reaction. The subject’s response is to conform to cultural criticism of what a body is supposed to look like, rather than propose a problem with how others perpetuate body expectations. “Hey Fat Boy” addresses a projected persona that results in an unhealthy internalization, which upsets the positive connotations associated with appetite such as desire and pleasure. Instead, the persona being addressed appeases to the chastising antagonist, and adopts the negative connotations of appetite such as obsession. For the subject, obsession comes in the form of not eating, and by proxy, not eating signifies the obsession of wanting to fit what is considered desirable: “bet you couldn’t have asked / for anything, or seconds, / or a piece of cheese.” The poem represents the indignity that queer and fat bodies face because of others’ easy acceptance of what society deems desirable or attractive, without realizing the harm and falsity of basing one’s own standpoint off of a cultural norm.
 
Fruit Mansion is a collection of abundance, feeling much like home, which is full of confrontation with family, friends, strangers, and society as a whole. Wein’s poems experience a range of situations, taking on personas that struggle and survive on their own. The reader witnesses the desire that comes with an appetite to continue to move forward for the opportunity to provide nourishment for those who connect to Wein’s verses. Fruit Mansion is ultimately a space for those reconciling their disparities, and where healing can begin to take form. 


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Miguel is the Book Review Editor for Jet Fuel Review. As an editor, his main concern is centering on marginalized voices. He appreciates radical, unapologetic writers, who can explore, both, the emotional and intellectual stresses found in examining the systemic results lived in a body's political standpoint. He has been published in EFNIKS, Rogue Agent, and others. He also writes for the Jet Fuel Review blog: 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
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      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
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      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
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      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
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      • 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
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
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