Built by Storms
Write Bloody Publishing
$18.00
You can purchase your copy here.
Reviewed by Sean Hanrahan
In the local poetry circle of Philadelphia, I have never heard a debut collection garner as much buzz as Miriam Kramer’s Built by Storms. I am here to tell you that the buzz for this hard-hitting, pull-no-punches, devastatingly beautiful collection is richly merited. This book is not for the faint of heart, but it will tug at the heartstrings. This book will go further—it will gift you a new and awakened heart.
One of the many standout poems in Built by Storms is “A Poem in Which He Is Alive Because You Sent Him to Prison.” The narrator in this book is candid and confessional about her battle with drug addiction and the people she met and lost in the struggle, including Phill. “Your Honor, did you see his skin was grey?/ I didn’t. I don’t know if I ever saw Phill/as he was.” She later describes him as “my best friend/and he is the worst thing to ever happen to me.” With the pulsating power of a strict, exacting pentameter, Kramer aims a well-directed arrow to the heart. In particular these near final lines are gutting, heart-wrenching, and expertly controlled:
Your honor,
you don’t know this, and I don’t know this,
but I will dream about his death six months before
it happens and I will miss him
the way I miss drugs, in a way that aches
like nothing else aches.
Phill and other friends who lost their lives are memorialized in the haunting poem, “To the God of Gas Station Bathrooms.” The tercets along with the title create a holiness that you see in LGBTQ poets who wrote odes to their friends lost to AIDS. The narrator refers directly to her survivor’s guilt in the lines:
There are days my body is heavy
with shovelfuls of guilt. It’s called Survivor’s Guilt
for a reason. Why not Phill, who taught me
to be a sneakerhead, why not Diane, why not Sean?
Why not Debbie, who told me my hair
looked like cotton candy, why not Mike,
why not Matthew? Or Sam, or Joe, or Angela?
Each name in this incantatory poem becomes memorialized, spiritualized. This poem exemplifies the act of remembrance as holy rite. This is a sacred wellspring Kramer is drawing from, and it is an extremely powerful catharsis for the poet as well as the reader.
The narrator also directly and powerfully refers to her addiction in the poem in which the title of the collection is taken “Upon Learning Jupiter, Along With Its Great Red Spot, Is Made of Hurricanes.” The poem begins, “I think, same. If I am built by anything,/surely, it’s storms.” The poem takes shape as a destructive hurricane, a swirling wind of recriminations:
I think of how many times I tore
my parents to shreds, seeking my own
Devastation. My father’s question mark voice
gets lost in the wind as he repeats,
possession of heroin, when I call him for a ride home
from the police station. My mother’s weather-worn
hands clench the courtroom bench
as I stand before a judge, call myself an addict,
watch her foundation crumble.
Through expanding the weather metaphor through the course of this poem, Kramer vivifies the devastating aftermath addiction can cause. She ends the poem with a potentially hopeful realization:
That I could get clean is miraculous,
like a solar system exploding into existence.
My fingernails slice valleys into my palms,
my knuckles are storm white, as I realize I, too,
have fought to be here, fought to take up space.
The poem, “Reason 47 to Live Through the Apocalypse,” reaffirms the narrator’s commitment to surviving the storm and whatever else the world throws at her, including the apocalypse: “To see what regrows from the rubble/because I have regrown from the rubble.” Through her experiences, the narrator has blossomed into a profoundly empathetic being. Kramer concludes this book, this journey (perhaps an overused word but certainly relevant here) with the shimmering lines:
After the end, when the grass starts
its resurgence, I want to offer the sprouts
and shoots tenderness after
a feat of resilience, whisper to them
as they grow, thank you,
you are here. Thank you, you made it.
You didn’t have to make it.
To say this book is a transforming experience, or a growth experience, is highly accurate. The perfect word to sum up Built by Storms is gratitude. Thank you for being here, Miriam, thank you for your wisdom, thank you for your words. I am grateful for this collection and this poet.
Sean Hanrahan is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collection Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt Press) and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone Press) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Moonstone Featured Poets, Queer Around the World, and Stonewall’s Legacy, and several journals, including Impossible Archetype, Mobius, Peculiar, Poetica Review, and Voicemail Poems. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days and Ekphrastic Poetry and hosted poetry events throughout Philadelphia.