J. A. Lagana’s poetry collection, Make Space, asks the haunting question can grief speak. And if it can speak, what would it say? What would its voice sound like? The voice Lagana imagines having is at turns lyrical: “Gather up wayward strands/of hair and thread and seaglass. Clear the dust/from every photograph. Add river stones.” and practical: “You can’t afford/to spend all your time with me.” In this masterful work, Lagana explores the contours of grief reminiscent of an ever-changing coastline. Grief ebbs and flows; grief lays bear the people or things taken away as well as those that are left behind.
After allowing grief to speak, which is a recurring motif in Make Space, Lagana’s first poem, “Letter to Stephen Regarding That Night in April” is a rich, detailed poem about the loss of a brother entwined with family lore:
I thought you were asleep, although the only time anyone
ever slept on the landing was that night Charlie came home
drunk from an office party, too many sheets to the wind,
you said. So, it wasn’t odd to see you there, on the landing,
stretched out a sheet up to your neck.
In prose poem couplets, Lagana explores her childhood in the house where her family member died with the powerful lines:
My wish, mumbled and sincere, would be for something silly,
like make Jamie Rogers fall in love with me.
Only on the landing that night the world turned serious.
I wished only for you to stay.
Lagana ends this beautiful elegy with the lines: “That house is long gone. Some days, /I am still kneeling on the landing, pleading with you.” To paraphrase Faulker, “Grief and family homes are never dead. They’re not even past.”
Make Space is divided into three sections, and the second section contains perhaps my favorite poem in the book, “She Favored the Scent of Fabergè’s Aphrodisia.” I admit this poem spoke to me so much since I inherited my grandfather’s cologne just as the speaker in this poem inherits her mother’s favorite perfume. This poem also elegantly incorporates caesuras and fully realizes the space on the page.
The poem begins:
Still and semi-filled
with that mossy-colored
unforgettable scent. I kept three,
each capped
in speckled gold…
There is a synesthesia to this poem that excites and soothes, a reached can see the scent and feel the perfume. And a half-filled perfume, or cologne, bottle is a perfect way to remember someone and to see their scent:
Time, if what they say
is true, you’ll dilute our losses—
diminish our longing
for what’s wafted away.
Before grief has the final word, and maybe it always does, Lagana ends the book with “Even Though I Will Eventually Tire.” The speaker admits she will eventually tire “of putting one step in front of the other/and heading out.” She “can’t get enough of the grey sky” or “how beautiful it is to walk/the same path day after day.” One palliative, I couldn’t bring myself to write cure, for grief is to find the joy and peace in everyday surroundings. A dying friend related to another friend of mine is what they discovered in the process of dying was gratitude. Lagana knows that this is also a lesson for the living, and in Make Space and in her shimmering and lovely poem, Lagana expresses sincere gratitude for the beauty in the world. Some of the beauty is found in language.
Since grief has the final word or poem in this book, I will let it have the final word here. But before, I finish this review, I want to commemorate the soothing, incantatory power of this debut collection. Grief:
Gather every version
of your faded family.
Wrap their memories.
A favored cloth will do…
I won’t always interfere…
Make space.
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.