Look Alive

Haunted by Look Alive

Before starting any new book, I always wonder how the author will make it new and engage me, if their voice will ring true and clear over the record grooves of literature already revolving in me. And Luiza Flynn-Goodlett more than delivered with Look Alive, a modern Southern poetry collection. She explores themes of death and decay, trauma, coming of age and into womanhood, queerness, joy, and even climate change in her 51 poems. The whole work delights, reminding me of the bitter beauty in a hard-earned bruise or better still, an insect, some glittering exoskeleton unprepared for the weight of human hands.

Look Alive captivates the reader with intelligent and concise descriptions. The work comes across as thoroughly Southern—the first poem has the word “magnolia” shining off the page like shorthand. With that single choice, I could feel the humidity in the summer setting. There is also a remarkably exact description of a relationship with anxiety—“I’ve spent a lifetime bent to its whisper”—in “The Worst.” Another compelling reference comes to light in “He Says/She Says.” Flynn-Goodlett alludes to Centralia, an ill-fated town built over coal mines. In the 1960s, Centralia’s mines caught fire, the depths of coal providing endless fuel for more than half a century. Those subterranean fires still burn hot today. The single mention of that eternally burning town drives home the severity of the rage and abuse experienced by the poem’s protagonist. Not just the master of a good reference, Flynn-Goodlett wields her skill with vocabulary equally as well. In one poem alone the combination of “Vantablack,” “spaghettifies,” “skinflint,” and “dotage” thrilled me.

To be clear, there is more to Look Alive than clever phrasing. I appreciated the depth of the author’s subject matter as well. Flynn-Goodlett doesn’t shield the reader from darkness, doesn’t flinch when nodding to the unspeakable. The one poem I couldn’t exorcise was “Against Forgiveness.” Like its siblings in this collection, its brevity only enhanced its impact. The line “… a poultice for / what in you hasn’t stopped / screaming” still haunts me. Everyone still chained to the memory of an assault has intimate knowledge of the deep well inside, where, “… treading water, is the child / you were, skin he / unzipped / you from.” In this piece, this inner child “… may find / handholds in moss, climb / skyward, or drown gagging, / but you must sit, witness it.” I was unprepared for the vulnerability and beauty amidst the brutality in Flynn-Goodlett’s truth-telling and the way this wound called to my own. There are more devastating poems with stark and painful lines and a trauma at their heart; see: “Seven Years After,” “To Ms. Melton,” and “Memory Loss.”

Tenderness also abounds in this collection. “Family Friend” asks a departed loved one “how to keep you fixed / in sight?” and begs “… Forgive[ness] / [for] the inattention that sweeps your visage / like leaves off a gravestone.” And I will add that I’ve never read a sweeter ode to a beloved cat than “To Shaman.”

The poems in Look Alive linger the way a burn lives on underneath the skin, insistent and unforgettable.

What makes Look Alive so special to me is that it defies simple categorization. It contains multitudes. I cannot simply divide the review into tender poems and devastating poems. Flynn-Goodlett is timely and relevant; “Think Well of Us” tackles climate change and characterizes the flippant irresponsibility of those destroying the planet with the patronizing line “I know, we can’t / leave you here. But we will.” There is queer sensuality in “Relational Aggression” with “heads bent to the lap’s / salt lick.” That same poem breathes acceptance, labeling the protagonist’s body “battered as an agate in the heart / of a rock tumbler, better for it.” This message of resiliency is further echoed in “On Wanting to Live,” which I read as a delicate tribute to Anne Sexton’s “On Wanting to Die.” Flynn-Goodlett’s version celebrates the “unfinished … / … burden and ballast” of life, listing things that keep the subject tethered to the living. I also enjoyed the way the volume began and ended with an idea lodged inside of a poem. “The Sublime Before (Is Someone’s After)” opens Look Alive and “(The Sublime Before) Is Someone’s After” closes it. The two serve as grounding reminders that the most painful moments in my existence may have already occurred or may be yet to come, but the past moments when we didn’t know how good we had it will last forever.

Look Alive reveals itself in layers, each re-read unveiling another meaningful discovery. The poems are tough, tender, and elusive, never disclosing too much, like thin sheets draped over almost-recognizable forms. To borrow a line from Flynn-Goodlett, something “… is always vanishing” in this dark and evocative volume. The poems in Look Alive linger the way a burn lives on underneath the skin, insistent and unforgettable.