Alice James Books (January 17, 2023)
Janine Joseph鈥檚 Decade of the Brain is a rattling collection of poetry that speaks to mind and body and how the two can have both dependent and distinct realities. The new collection explores the aftermath of a traumatic accident, often in an attempt to retrace memory and self. In the poem 鈥淎t the Hawthorne Barbell Club,鈥� she asks, 鈥渘ow I am sure I heard the air leave me. / Where, over the seatbelt, did my matter go? // Where did I go, slumped over the seatbelt?鈥� Poetry is an act of remembrance, and yet, what can be done when memory suffers erasure? Where does truth and reality meet, diverge?
Throughout the collection, the mind and the body take on distinct characters. Often moving between the first person 鈥淚鈥� and the third person 鈥渉er,鈥� Joseph renders the difference between intention and action, between current self and wounded self, between past and present. Joseph demonstrates the distance that trauma can have on the body and perception of self, 鈥渂ad body takes a break / like a bone. It balances its head / with a throbbing鈥� and then 鈥渂ad body is so / negative. Bad body won鈥檛 get dressed鈥� (鈥淔our Darks in Red鈥�). Joseph also negotiates the body鈥檚 possibilities. In pain the body is a snake, in love, 鈥淚 was a globe鈥 windmill, once鈥� and then 鈥渁 stream of particulate light鈥� (鈥淟ove in the Time of Vertigo鈥�).
Decade of the Brain is aesthetically captivating and deeply playful. Joseph uses several forms including erasure, haiku, and a poem in the form of a medical chart. Each form explores some element of experience, be it the falter of memory or the spinning of a car losing control. The poems visually translate how a body may be 鈥渟wayed in suspension like an empty hammock鈥� or be 鈥渢hrashed in the gale.鈥� Joseph plays with repetition, repeating and rewording phrases and questions as one might when trying to piece something back together. Through the use of unusual sentence structures and fragmentation, Joseph wields language to provoke, to disorient, to liberate.
Joseph balms the ache of trauma, 鈥渋ts crutch of blocks鈥 crunch // of glass鈥� with exemplary attention to sound. In 鈥淟ove, Elizabeth鈥� she orients herself through music, 鈥渢heir tittering / I heard, through / the tinnitus鈥� and then, 鈥渨e sounded ourselves // like keyboards clacking / or lettered dice around / a grid, rattling and never // settling.鈥澛� Some sounds awaking the reader, others lulling as if to soothe the brain.
Decade of the Brain is a deeply intelligent, often sensory, book about the demanding act of healing, of reorientation, of getting through鈥攂e it injury, trauma, immigration, or love: 鈥淚 hear the seeds I planted are birds now,鈥� Joseph writes in 鈥淭ell Me of Paradise.鈥� And what more could one ask for but to witness such metamorphosis.
is a formerly undocumented poet and librettist from the Philippines. She is the author of Decade of the Brain (Alice James Books, 2023) and Driving without a License (2016), winner Kundiman Poetry Prize. She is also co-editor of Undocupoetics: An Introduction, an anthology of poetry and poetics forthcoming from HarperCollins/Harper Perennial. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech.
Nicole Lachat was born in Edmonton, Canada, to a Peruvian mother and Swiss father. She earned her MFA from New York University. Her poetry appears on Poets.org 补苍诲听颈苍 Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Ruminate Magazine, Bird Feast Magazine, and Palimpsest Magazine, among others. She received the 2022 Wilbur Gaffney Poetry Prize through the Academy of American Poets. Lachat is currently pursuing her PhD in creative writing at the University of Nebraska, where she teaches and works as the Book Prize Coordinator for Prairie Schooner and the African Poetry Book Fund.