A book of poems by Allison Whittenberg, they were horrible cooks is an emotional read about grief, loss, and humanity.
With around sixty short poems, half of which have been published previously in various journals, Whittenberg’s work takes the little moments in life and scatters them through the pages.
It’s not a book I could read in one sitting, rather one to dip in, choose, and savour. I know poetry collections give thought to order and tone, but I have never been able to read them cover to cover.
Titles pull me in. Truce gives the book its title, and in just 17 lines a whole story is told of abuse within a sheen of normality. Dora Circa The War Years takes the historical genocide of Jews as its personal tale.
A Husband’s Duty leaves us unconnected, unable to see inside the books of his poet wife, dead two or three years, but we feel his discomfort. Extant considers the need for survival and cannibalism following a plane crash, and the shame that goes with that instinct for life.
Did you know? uses eggshells as a metaphor for white supremacy in a handful of lines. Hedy assesses the beauty and brains of the film star and inventor Hedy Lamarr, and by extension all women who are viewed with suspicion if they have both.
Vivian Seeks Stardom is about the black Dandridge sisters in Hollywood’s golden age, tragic wheels left to head in the wrong direction. And in both Day Job and Days and Dollars the daily routine is its own little death.
This is a book that uses language sparingly and without artifice, instead relying on the emotional connection, whether the subject is general or specific.
The closing poem, Temperate, has the eroticism of touch and love, but feels more weighty. It reaches back to the opener, Words Leave Me Hungry, but that poem jarred a little.
Synchronizung plays on words, on feelings. It tumbles over itself, almost, in a rush to the end of the page. Two Memories is families, again, siblings perhaps, competition and coercion.
This is a quiet book. A book which itches at first, then breaks the skin to cause a little pain and suffering, before soothing the area and beginning again.
Allison Whittenberg’s they were horrible cooks is published by Cornerstone Press.