Drowning in Light
Drowning in Light by Taylor Steele
Platypus Press, 15 euros
(shipping included)
“i quit / the business of tomorrow. / leave believing / to the wind.”
Another pandemic which has ravaged the world alongside Covid-19 for the last two years is loneliness. Lockdowns and social distancing have accelerated trends towards isolation that started well before Covid-19. Over the last two years, a choice to go out to a restaurant or movie theater has become a potentially life or death decision and so many folks have opted to stay home to enjoy the ease of a delivered meal and a streaming movie, often by themselves. The situation has been crippling for many. If you are someone who has struggled with loneliness, Taylor Steele’s new book, Drowning in Light, will be a source of validation and catharsis.
The longing for human touch and connection is visceral in this collection. For instance, in one poem the narrator states, “i haven’t been touched in over a year / just as a mouse scurries from my closet to / the radiator, and i suppose that’s what it’s like to touch me.” Isolated, one can begin to think themselves unworthy of human companionship or even the slightest touch. Perhaps most frightening, that sense of being cut off from the rest of the world can begin to feel normal. Indeed, throughout the collection this separation takes many forms; in friendships, in families, in romantic relationships, and even in the wider culture. We feel for the narrator as she floats adrift, “what is it about death that brings us home when all we really want is to have never had one in the first place.”
Steele writes about all of this with a gift for imagery used to convey complex emotional states. There is a rare intensity here, and I often found myself captivated by the onslaught of rhythms and images. “In my life, I have identified as… hot garbage juice, a slut, shattered porcelain doll, unlovable, stuck under the hoof of the elephant in the room.” It is more difficult than it appears to write poetry at such a high emotional pitch. It is even harder when the poet does not shy away from confronting hard truths. “Sometimes I wish for fewer things to feel / sometimes I wish to be a factory.” Who has not wished to escape their humanity at times, to replace it with the convenience of a machine?
One thing I search for and adore in a poetry collection is a unique turn of phrase. Steele offers a few of them in Drowning in Light. One of my favorites is, “where, here, is there room / for celebration? who brought / the cake to the gunfight?” Steele takes an idiom (bringing a knife to a gunfight) and turns it on its head to explore what is often an adversarial relationship in families. Not only does she play with the idiom, she challenges it as well. Because while the idiom is often used to celebrate violence and excuse it, Steele uses it to reveal how violence is so insidious that it can even exist at the most innocent family celebration.
By the time I reached the end of the book, I discovered a theme of survival in Steele’s poems. I felt the loneliness ebbing as the narrator opened up. “I introduce hope to my bitterness so neither will be alone. / I rest. / And I do not apologize.” This last line may be the most important of all. For as one leaves isolation behind in search of a broader world, the temptation to apologize for merely existing in this new sphere can be overwhelming. And yet it often takes a group of proud individuals to form the communities that the narrator, and all of us, long for.
Benjamin Schmitt
Benjamin Schmitt is the author of four books, most recently The Saints of Capitalism and Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sojourners, Antioch Review, The Good Men Project, Hobart, Columbia Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. A co-founder of Pacifica Writers’ Workshop, he has also written articles for The Seattle Times and At The Inkwell. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.