News:
  • Intimate Streams: Nomadland, Pieces of a Woman, Supernova
  • A History of Asian Americans
  • I Am Not A Virus
  • The Third Line
  • LIFE AFTER MILKBONE
  • eating the gods
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
Cultural Weekly logo
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food

Book Review: Prime Meridian by Connie Post

By John Brantingham on July 22, 2020 in Poetry

Click Here To View Comments

Connie Post’s newest poetry collection, Prime Meridian is more than just a book that investigates the ongoing life of a family that has been damaged by an abusive father, but that is perhaps the largest theme that runs through it and certainly as a reader, that is the part that I am left contemplating after having read it. Such a book can be healing for the poet, and the best can be healing for the reader as well. This is one of those books. The narrator relives life since childhood dealing with someone who is sometimes violent, often drunk, and difficult to deal with always. She must find a way to break away from his hold, and when she does, she is left with memories of the man, which still haunts her and what feels like unresolved guilt for not being there for him as he ages, although she clearly has nothing to feel guilty about.

So many of these poems drew me into the family drama that feels similar to so many family dramas. The poem “De-boning a Fish” remains in my memory because of the power of the last lines. As a child, the narrator watches the fish that her father catches gasping and struggling on land before they are killed, and she wonders if they pray for the death he is bringing to end their suffering, and she ends the poem with this idea:

you can tell me
(and I already know)
that fish
don’t understand
these kinds of things

but neither does
a small child

at some point
don’t we all beg
for mercy (21)

By the time that we have caught up with the narrator in the present tense, she is no longer begging for mercy, but the memories of that time in her life remain raw, as they must. It is nice to be able to read the work of an author like this who reaches across the page and lets us know that we are not special or alone in our pain. Others have gone through it before us. She has. Now, she is showing us a way forward.

However, that way forward is not, of course, removed from pain. Once she has resolved to move forward, she is left with unresolved memory. In “To Someone I Must Forget,” she writes,

I keep wondering what must be said
to make my skin forget
calloused hands against a throat

if I use all those words

bone
salt
knowledge
memory
marrow

will you understand
any better
where you reside (37).

She is left with the pain of the memory, and the pain of not being able to understand why she has been treated this way. There is no way to understand abuse, of course. It does not come from a rational place, but that does not mean that those who live with it don’t crave explanation. Also, in the present tense, the narrator is left with the knowledge that her abuser is entering the pain of old age, and she wonders about him.

I don’t want to know
that you live half way across town
broken in your Alzheimer’s
broken from the decades
we have not spoken (38).

She has lost not only the potential for joy in her childhood, but also the care that she could be giving her parents now.

The best thing I can say about a book is that it is honest, and this one is. I love what Post has done here, and I admire it too. This is a book that should be read and understood and reread

Click Here To View Comments

Tagsbook reviewconnie postJohn Brantinghampoetry reviewprime meridian

Previous Story

LIFE AFTER BIRTH CRAVES A KISS

Next Story

Reading about how governments react and respond to problems (Reading well in times of illness, finale)

About the author

John Brantingham

John Brantingham

Website

John Brantingham is Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park’s first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016. He has ten books of poetry and fiction including The L.A. Fiction Anthology (Red Hen Press) and A Sublime and Tragic Dance (Cholla Needles Press). He teaches at Mt. San Antonio College. (Photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher.)

Related Posts

  • Review of Rescue Plan by Stephanie Barbé Hammer

    By Kendall Johnson
    Suppose the proverbial genie popped out of...
  • Jason Irwin’s The History of Our Vagrancies

    By John Brantingham
    Jason Irwin’s new collection hits me where...
  • A Review of American Ash by Michael Simms

    By Alexandra Umlas
    The final poem of Michael Simms’s recent...
  • David A. Romero’s My Name Is Romero

    By John Brantingham
    I have never attended one of David A....

Support Our Friends

Follow Us

Join Our Mailing List

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @CulturalWeekly

Comments

  • Lisa Segal Lisa Segal
    Valentine’s Day Redux: a Second Chance at True Love
    Marvelous!!!!!!!
    2/14/2021
  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    Shakespeare on Despots, Power, and Finally… Transition
    Timely and educational this post Your scholarship...
    1/31/2021
  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    Abigail Wee: “Growing Home”
    A first place well deserved While the particular...
    1/24/2021

New

  • Intimate Streams: Nomadland, Pieces of a Woman, Supernova
  • Is CBD Oil Safe for My Dog?
  • How to Add Texture to the Wall and the Wall Hangings for Decoration
  • A History of Asian Americans
  • I Am Not A Virus

Tags

art dance film Los Angeles music photography poem poems poetry tomorrow's voices today

Like us

Please Help

Donate

Who are we?

Cultural Weekly is a place to talk about our creative culture with passion, perspective and analysis – and more words than “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Our mission is to draw attention to our cultural environment, illuminate it, and make it ... read more

Site map

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact us
  • Contributors
  • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Food
  • Home
  • Masthead
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Submission Form
  • Submissions: Write for us
  • Subscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Thank You

Links

Adam Leipzig
Entertainment Media Partners
This Is Crowd
CreativeFuture
Plastic Oceans Foundation
Arts & Letters Daily
Alltop
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Jack Grapes
Ethan Bearman
Writ Large Press

Mailing List

* indicates required


  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Contact us
Cultural Weekly is the digital magazine and public platform of Next Echo Foundation. DONATE HERE.
Copyright © 2010-2020 by Adam Leipzig. All Rights Reserved.