This week I’ve been reading Kristina Marie Darling’s Melancholia (An Essay). !Fantastico! It is a beautiful, small book put out by Ravenna Press. Darling tells a love story through fragments, definitions, glossaries, and footnotes. She uses these elements to bring forth the absence of the “essay” — whatever (imagined) primary text told this tale of heartache to begin with. I absolutely love this method of presence-via-absence.
I’m also very intrigued by Darling’s use of certain objects and repeated syntactical patterns to unify the various scraps of story. Objects recur: a silver button, a necklace, its clasp, a stairway. A nightingale sings from time to time in the background. Phrases recur: “magnificently white throat,” “the most ___(adj.)___ music,” “tiny silver ___object___.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular strategy (repeated syntactical patterns) for bringing unity to a group of poems. I predict much begging, borrowing, and stealing! Buy this book