Review of Erica Abbott’s Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship
January 20, 2021
Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship
Toho Publishing
$12.00
You can purchase a copy here.
Reviewed by Sean Hanrahan
Every poetry reader can remember the rare moments when they were struck by unrelenting honesty in verse, especially when it is paired with lyrical imagery and thoughtful flashes of insight and wit. I believe when a poetry reader picks up Erica Abbott’s Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship they will have several of those moments.
Abbott shows remarkable honesty early on in her debut chapbook with the poem, “10 Things You Should Know About Mental Illness.” She writes “Don’t stand too close/ because even though I won’t mean to hurt you,/ I will. You must learn to look past the sparkle.” This poem, featured in the half of the book aptly titled “Darkness,” pulls no punches as the narrator describes to her loved ones her struggles, her fears, her experience with mental illness. In the vein of successful confessional and lyric poets, Abbott deftly interweaves nature imagery to serve as a landscape for the narrator’s emotions:
It crashes into me like a wave, knocking me down
and threatening to drown me if I’m not careful.
But I didn’t know I was standing in the ocean,
even as it foamed at my feet. The salt no longer
stings the wounds; it just makes them bleed more. I
don’t notice the seas redden.
Nature imagery recurs quite frequently in this chapbook. In the closing poem contained in the second half of the book titled “Hope,” Abbott instructs us “How to Stargaze Through the Light Pollution.” At first, it appears we can only see the stars through artificial means: downloading a “star finder app” or “phosphorescent star stickers.” Frustrated at light pollution, like so many of us stargazers, she exclaims we should “[t]urn off every light in this city. No—/ to hell with that—make it the world.” After that event, “[b]illions of people will…cry as the cosmos opens up before them.” Like all true poets, Abbott knows that there is at least one more thing important than nature, and that is love. In her fifth and final instruction, she writes
Gaze into the eyes
of your lover. Lose yourself
in every shooting star and supernova
lighting up your face. This is how
you rediscover the universe.
Abbott deploys strategic flashes of insight and wit in the poem, “St. Ends, Patron Saint of Endings.” In this narrative poem, she writes about a broken friendship and “Best Friends” necklace where “the side I kept reads: st ends.” The narrator relays the universal and painful experience of friends drifting apart after attending different schools where they never find that same true friendship again. She writes, “[w']e walk into different rooms where the only/ people who know our names are those with an/ attendance sheet.” She chides herself for not reaching out to her distant friend:
.And I think how very fitting it is to be the patron
saint of endings.
Why can’t I just pick up the phone, say hello—
how have you been?
Relationships are a central theme in Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship. In perhaps the most luminous poem from the “Hope” section, Abbott compares her romantic relationship to “Light in the Fog:”
I’ve always loved the way the light
interacts with fog—
the way it filters through like
moonlight on a cobweb.
This tender poem uses lush language to express her love and helps to give this sterling chapbook a welcome roundness of darkness and hope, of pain and love. Whether reading it silently or aloud, by yourself or with a loved one, Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship will break your heart and mend it again. It will blow you away with its poignancy and grace. Abbott shows wisdom and lyrical grace that belies the fact that this is her debut work. Expect more to come from this dedicated, already very talented, 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 (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.