Review of Jenn Koiter’s So Much of Everything by Naomi Thiers
Although Jenn Koiter’s exciting collection So Much of Everything isn’t formally broken into sections, it feels as if it is because the poems have many different moods and styles. This book won the 2021 DC Poet Project prize administered by D.C. arts group Day Eight (dayeight.org/dc-poet-project) and it has riches to offer. The book seems to move from the voice of someone who feels “different” and rather separate from others to the voice of someone fully experiencing grief for someone she lost.
Many of the first 13 poems center on a speaker who is a bit of a mess, a bit of an oddball, or at least has rotten timing. Several poems feature a character called The Messy Girl, who doesn’t have it together at all—and not just in terms of her appearance:
Lines of birds shift in the air like words that cannot stay still
on the page, latecomers looking for a place
in an already crowded field. What else is wrong?
She might be coming down with a cold. (There was a man with a cold.)
She might be pregnant. (There was a broken condom.)
Or consider (from “The Messy Girl Discovers She’s a Gay Camp Icon”)
She puts on
addiction like a rhinestone bustier, suffering
like a sheer black backless bodysuit.
And her love affairs are an earring, an earring,
and high, high heels.
“The Messy Girl Carries a Torch for the Boy Who Could Not Stop Washing” tells how this character is obsessed with other misfits and people with odd medical conditions. It may sound like it’s all just too quirky, but these poems are more human and relatable than that. I think readers—especially women—will feel Koiter echoes their own messy emotional and physical experiences. “The Messy Girl’s Hair Is a Mess” is packed with sensory details about hair and skin. In “Through Snow,” the speaker drives home through such blinding snow that she begins to doubt the evidence of her senses and isn’t sure she’s entering the right house when she pulls up to home. And in “Easter Night,” a woman realizes she slept through Easter day (“through hugs and handshakes of smiling strangers, earnest, quavery hymns”) and says:
I wish I were a woman who could
worship the sun rising.
I would stand with them and cheer.
Though someone must greet the dark
each day, and how much more
today, when all is new?
In the book’s middle are the “Candy Jones” poems, Candy Jones being a 1940s cover girl and beauty expert who published guides on beauty in the ‘50s and ‘60s. These are collage poems created using only sentences plucked from Jones’s beauty guides. They weren’t my favorites in the book, but the creative arrangements of semi-scolding, often contradictory, statements on how to be “beautiful” is impressive—and shows how weird and tiring it is to try to be what society expects of a woman.
Make a critical rundown of your imperfect features.
Hold your stomach absolutely flat
and tuck your buttocks in neatly.
Pay attention to your shoulders. Pay attention
to the condition of your shoes.
Observe swimsuit ads
and learn to stand gracefully
with your knees together.
Practice sitting and standing in front of a full-length mirror
until you’re certain
you place your legs in the most becoming positions.
And later, in “Ghazal, With Accessories”:
Make your first appearance upon your arrival wearing a hat.
Even if hats are not your favorite accessory, wear a hat.
[soon followed by]
Your goal is pureness of line and complete simplicity.
Choose your jewelry accents sparingly. Don’t wear a hat.
The collection then moves into free verse poems centered on various subjects: Travel to other countries (including “The Messy Girl Feels at Home in Delhi”), reflections on a religious upbringing and spirituality, and even a poem about a set of tools on the family farm the speaker was forbidden to touch as a child. Again, there’s a bit of emphasis on the speaker being “different.” But I love “Early Dinner Ending with a Line from Thomas Merton,” in which a woman sitting at a restaurant bar cringes at the behavior of some tacky tourists, but soon realizes she is the only one bothered; all others at the bar are accepting and enjoying each other. Even the speaker who feels herself so apart is one of the community.
The last four poems, starting with the long, sectioned poem “The Survivor,” are more spare in style. They take us into the shock and darkness of grieving for a loved one who has died suddenly. I found these the most moving poems in the book. They’re a gut punch, but because the speaker’s emotional expression is so direct, raw, and authentic, we feel a warm connection to her and compassion for her. Here are two excerpts from “The Survivor”:
I push my foot into my boot, and you die.
I put my toothbrush on its stand, and you die.
I put on my headset, and you die.
I fixed myself tea, I order Thai food, I smudge
the surface of my tablet, and you die. . . .
and
All I remember about your body
in its casket are the thick, black sutures
across the top of your bald head, and
the color of your skin: darkened,
mottled, like you were one big bruise.
Perhaps I should’ve taken,
another look, a longer look,
but how long can anyone stand
before miracle, and your body
stitched and purple and emptied, was
a miracle: wine back into water,
water back into the rock.
There are so many different moods, styles, voices, and language feats in these poems that I think any reader will find something here that feeds them.
You can find Jenn Koiter’s book So Much of Everything (2021) at Day Eight Books: day-eight-books.myshopify.com/products/so-much-of-everything-by-jenn-koiter.
Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.
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