Loisa Fenichell: Review by Jonathan Fletcher
Loisa Fenichell, Wandering in All Directions of This Earth (Ghost Peach Press)
As the title of Loisa Fenichell’s award-winning debut collection of poetry suggests, Wandering in All Directions of This Earth (2023) does indeed transport the reader to various and numerous places, such as Dublin, Ireland; Berkeley, California; Portland, Oregon; Nyack, New York; and Tucson, Arizona. More than that, though, Fenichell’s debut collection traverses time, mood, and states of thought. Interspersed with the author’s own black-and-white photographs—each carefully curated, each of which lends the work an aesthetic of a lost and craved epoch, each of which compliments and otherwise speaks to the poem above or below, or adjacent to itself—Fenichell’s debut collection proves itself not only a literary treat but a visual one. Separated into seven sections, organized by scenes, full of titles that jump off the page—ones like “I miss somebody still alive,” “Some lines are best left unsaid,” and “Blue aches (biography for the one I adore”)—Wandering in All Directions of This Earth explores and discovers, examines and questions, affirms and celebrates. In the hands of a poet of lesser skill, Fenichell’s debut collection might well accomplish only one of these, might well meander instead of venture, or might well rely on the accompanying images to succeed poetically. In Fenichell’s capable hands, however, Wandering in All Directions of This Earth does not so much take the reader on an adventure but proves itself no less than a pilgrimage, however modern and secular, allowing for not only a most interior exploration of the self but also sacred moments of reflection and revelation, even transformation.
In the aptly titled opening poem, “In the beginning,” a free-verse piece in which the title is clearly meant to run into what is technically the first line, Fenichell, purposely drawing on classic biblical language (though wisely choosing not to let the piece venture into the dogmatic), has the speaker say, “there was planet / and so much / light. / I wanted / to go home. Because I / remembered home” (Fenichell 2023, 1). Unlike the creation myth from The Book of Genesis, however, Fenichell’s opening narrative does not feature the imaginative power of an omnipotent divinity but rather a world that is all too human, a world lost and mourned: “I wanted / to sing endearment. I wanted / to want” (ibid.). Never letting such poignant moments of wistfulness veer into the vague or sentimental, Fenichell, in characteristic style, balances such lines with anchoring specificity. For example, in the penultimate and ultimate verse paragraphs of the first page, the speaker says, “I remember / a field too / long / as the stem of a pear / chosen in upstate New York” (ibid.). Similarly, the speaker, in the next two verse paragraphs, admits, “I knew him / dear as I knew the cat / who slept on my windowsill / like a clay figurine” (ibid. 2023, 2). Not only does such specificity ground the reader but tantalizingly hints at the identity, location, and direction of the unnamed speaker, with whom the reader may understandably (but perhaps incorrectly) identify as the author herself.
As with the other non-prose poems included in the collection, each deliberately and effectively placed, Fenichell’s creativity and poetic successfulness not only lies in what she says or how she says it but on what word or thought she chooses to enjamb a line. For example, midway through the opening poem, the speaker acknowledges, “Of course / I wanted / desire to be with me / now. I remember / in a bed, I did not / want him. I did not / desire him / in a bed” (ibid. 2023, 1). Without such narrow enjambment, not only would such a fitting staccato rhythm be lost but so, too, the multiplicity of meanings otherwise interpretable from such admittedly short yet emotionally packed lines. For example, when the speaker says, “I wanted,” followed by no other word on the same line, the verb “wanted” reads as intransitive and thereby opens up the possibility of cosmic loss and equally felt mourning. Only when the reader reaches the next line (“desire to be with me”) is the meaning both slightly focused and personalized and the reader’s understanding thus enhanced (ibid.). So, too, when the speaker says, “I remember,” which, other than the word that precedes it from the previous sentence, reads as intransitive and thereby suggests the very action of remembrance as opposed to the recollection a specific memory. As with the previous example, only when the reader reaches the next lines of the sentence (“in a bed, I did not / want him”) is the meaning both narrowed and further personalized (even made intimate) and the reader’s understanding yet again enhanced (ibid.). With such lineally intentional revelations, Fenichell not only keeps the language consistently fresh and surprising but evokes a cosmic sense of birth and growth. Like the Author of Life alluded to in the title of this opening poem, Fenichell brings (nearly sings) into existence an entire world. Unlike The Book of Genesis, however, Fenichell’s “In the beginning” not only invites the reader to bear witness to such act of creation but to take part in it, be changed by it. What could be more sacred than that?
In “On the Farm in Manchester, Vermont,” another (and much later) free-verse poem of Fenichell’s, no explicit biblical allusion is made. Instead, the piece begins with an all-too-human admission: “I made so many mistakes” (ibid. 2023, 75). Though the title could well be understood as part of what is technically the first line of the piece, as in the case of “In the beginning,” it may also be intended as a standalone title. In other words, the speaker of the poem could have made many mistakes in general or could have made such mistakes only on the farm in Manchester. Regardless, each remains an intriguing possibility, and both are interpretable from a close reading of the text. As with “In the beginning,” as well as many of the other poems included in Fenichell’s debut collection, currents of loss and mourning run throughout “On the Farm in Manchester, Vermont.” Though there is enjambment, the lines, unlike those in “In the beginning,” run long, as if reflecting the image of seemingly endless rows of crops.
However, interesting lineal moves also occur within the poem. For example, the lines after the first and second verse paragraphs not only run short but share the same syntactical structure: “I had a family. / I loved them. I did not think of them” (ibid.). Such punctuated lines not only stand out from the rest of the poem syntactically but also thematically, e.g., their emphasis on the individuality of the speaker, which stands in stark contrast to the communal and interdependent nature of agricultural life. In such a poetically rich setting, desire resides within “chickens, the cows; the short radishes soaking in the shed’s sink,” and socks run “thick as odysseys” (ibid.). Though human, the speaker, in a clearly zoomorphic move, flails her hands in a gallinaceous manner, mimicking the winged locomotion of a chicken. Here, the line between human and poultry blurs, as is evident in the speaker’s concluding moment of insight, as well as the equally arresting image that ends the poem: “I know now I am no queen of rural beings. I just wonder if it would help me to look at the sun / before I went flying again” (ibid.).
Whether calling into creation a new way of thinking, even being, as in the case of “In the beginning,” or expressing regret and mourning loss within an environment in which what is human is not always easily distinguishable from what is animal (though no less primal), as with “On the Farm in Manchester, Vermont,” Wandering in All Directions of This Earth is one not to miss. Get lost in it, let it envelope you. Try to come away from Fenichell’s debut collection of poetry unimpressed, unenlightened, unchanged. I dare you.
Jonathan Fletcher has been published in Acropolis Journal, The Adroit Journal, Arts Alive San Antonio, The Bayou Review, The BeZine, BigCityLit, Book of Matches Literary Journal, Catch the Next: Journal of Ideas and Pedagogy, Colossus Press, Curio Cabinet, Door is a Jar, DoubleSpeak, Emerge Literary Journal, Five South, Flora Fiction, FlowerSong Press, fws: a journal of literature & art, Glassworks, Half Hour to Kill, Heimat Review, The Hemlock: A Literary Arts Journal, The Hooghly Review, Hyacinth Review, and many other literary journals.