Emily Skaja's second poetry collection, Black Lake, is a wry yet moving record of infertility at a turbulent point in history.
Skaja (Brute) depicts cycles of anticipation and angst as she longs for motherhood. "I wanted an uncomplicated joy," but hope keeps being dashed. She found that "grief is a circle" of "Growing the baby. Losing the baby./ Trying again. Years of this." She remains self-deprecating rather than self-pitying, however. One miscarriage occurred at a Memphis plant nursery across the street from a women's clinic, leading to the punning poem title "Plant Parenthood." Continuing that metaphorical association between flora and babies, she highlights the irony that unwanted plants--like poison ivy and cucumbers--flourish, whereas desired ones wither.
Multiple poems reference the black lake, a symbol of sorrow in striking contrast with the red of blood loss. Another series is entitled "It's the stage of grief where..." (finishing, e.g., "[I become trapped in November]"). But the 41 poems also move beyond individual experience into the disheartening realities of world events. Skaja was a regular at the "all-night diner of depression" before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, she jokes, "when suddenly a whole crowd of people/ joined me." There are satirical poems about billionaires controlling the weather and dead dictators fertilizing the soil the same as anyone else. The absurd imagery in "Anxiety Dreams" ("Someone gave me thirty lions a year ago/ & I just remembered they're upstairs") is reminiscent of Caroline Bird.
Black Lake is a radiant blend of the personal and the political, of heartbreak and hilarity. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck