Review of Deborah Turner’s Sweating It Out
November 18, 2020
In her debut chapbook collection, Sweating It Out, Deborah Turner breaks out from the pack. This metaphor is entirely appropriate since Turner refers to this collection as her “jock poetry.” As a reader may expect, she explores the connection between sports and self-discovery, but she also carves out poetic space to investigate income inequality, remember 9/11, and celebrate gospel music.
One of the strengths of this collection is Turner’s use of rhythm. In “Double Dutch,” she writes
Got two girlfriends
turning rope
as she hops nimble…
not letting twirling twine
come between
her pulsing connection
with the earth.
With her word choice and short lines, Turner invites the reader to join the poem’s main character, LaTasha, in double dutch. Turner proceeds with rich visual, aural, and kinesthetic imagery. LaTasha is precocious, watchful, and a fully realized poetic subject who realizes the “world outside them ropes/ain’t even here” and emerges out of playground jump rope chants that evocatively weave their way into the poem like “Go girl./You, go girl.”
In “Consumption,” the most overtly political poem in the collection, Turner tackles the media’s simplified infographic approach to showing income inequality. Echoing Langston Hughes’ “Harlem,” she writes
Show me
a blotted bar graph
boxing scenes
in a dream deferred
She mocks “cute little/USA Today diagrams” that reduce a serious issue into an inappropriately anodyne depiction of those struggling to make it in an aggressively consumerist society. Pulling no punches, Turner wants these news outlets to
Print me some proof
that purchasing power
means more than
a wish, a prayer
and a lottery ticket.
This powerful poem really hammers home the facile depiction of serious issues in our media, and it is my favorite poem in this collection.
Later in this collection, Turner turns her considerable poetic gifts to love. All poets have their love poems, but few display such tenderness as “Coming Down”, all while using 9/11 as a backdrop: “It was the year they toppled/the twin towers.” During this unprecedented and trying time in America, the narrator finds love that “came to [her] like a rain cloud/building over parched earth.” She continues with sensuous and expertly employed natural imagery:
your belly’s moist touch reaching
for my packed soil yielding
to your slow grove dripping
into my wanton crevice aching.
The shimmering beauty of this poem is captured in the final few lines that harken to and then move beyond the despair and destruction of 9/11: “And somehow, I was uplifted/by your full weight/coming down on me.”
In the final poem of this rich and layered collection, “When I Arise,” Turner, a fine singer herself, pens an ode to singing in the shower, that peaceful place where I am sure many poems and musical compositions are formed.
In the shower
my song can burst forth
for I feel safe
when groomed by liquid phalanges.
With tinglingly precise language, she describes the ablutions of the narrator’s showering routine. While performing these rote actions, she realizes “I have forgotten/the world outside my curtain.” She is lost in her own voice, singing the words from a gospel song:
I can feel it
moving,
moving on the altar
of my heart
every now and then.
The lyrics of the song cause her to “stand proud and naked” in front of her mirror: “Only she expected—demanded even/the peace-filled eyes/that return her bold gaze.” With these lines, this uplifting and gorgeous chapbook comes to an end. And for all you sports fans out there, Turner writes exuberant poems about baseball, basketball, and tennis. This chapbook has the power to enclose you in its pages and allows you, like LaTasha and the narrator of “When I Arise,” to leave the world behind. Seldom have I read such a rich and warm chapbook. Sweating It Out will be a volume poetry lovers can return to time and time again for sustenance, joyousness, and grace.
Sean Hanrahan is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collection Safer Behind Popcorn (read review here) (2019 Cajun Mutt Press) and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone Press) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). He is currently at work on several literary projects as well as teaching a chapbook class. He currently serves on the Moonstone Press Editorial Board, is head poetry editor for Toho, and is workshop instructor for Green Street Poetry.