The inherent dimness of progressing through the meandered obscurities and absurdities of living, like a caravan lost in a dessert, thirsty and willing to fight to find water, is the contradiction towards which Daquin attempts to draw us. It isn’t that there is no joy or peace in life, yet it is rimmed with salt that might tickle sometimes, like a spicy margarita’s salt-rimmed glass, and sometimes pinch a great deal when sprinkled on an open wound. A recent song, Only love Can hurt Like this by Paloma Faith, comes to mind as I continue reading Daquin’s poems, as most of them are about love—a love that is unrequited, confused, tormented, and sometimes satiated. A love that receives, gives, loses, prevents, pleases, and is consumed by its own motif, emotionally and physically. Love poems by John Keats, Anne Bronte, and William Shakespeare come to mind.
The second element that stands out in this beautifully crafted book is gendered nuances and veracity. Womanhood, sisterhood, and LGBTQIA+ are some of the focus points for Daquin. In all, the celebration of diversity emerges through a distinct semantics about equity challenges that persist despite the millions of dollars spent educating girls and on DEI programs. And therefore, Daquin appears as a shining mentor, encouraging all to follow their path, their hearts, and be supportive of each other, regardless of their gender identification. This very personal, confessional collection is a rare clarion call to let people be, let them exist, without impinging any kind of preconceived collateral damage on their romantic or self-identification choices. It’s the salutation to the “self” that Daquin’s poetry heralds. To give one example:
Oh women
slow down
disease chases those who survive by drowning
stop and listen to the beat of your heart
far from competitive playground.
teach your daughters to dream
not weight loss and prom dresses
nor crabs in a bucket, pinching others back
that we emerged from clay
forging and set, with our tender strength
each other free. (That we were clay, p. 17)
This brings me to my third and final point for the purposes of this review: that the parity Daquin seeks for all is revealed the most in this collection through poems on love, on longing, on need, and on establishing some reasonable semblance of normalcy. There is a sense of dystopian misery in failed love that seeks help for a return to better times. In the poem Intimidation (p. 24), Daquin says at the end, “we purchase pieces of costume/rev up the game/dinner eats the diner/let’s turn form on its head/and dance barefoot, deft/learned in bondaged war/with ourselves.” Daquin also talks about the need for love’s nourishment.
I am a soul needing
nourishment
it does
not come in usual
form
used to
chain and ball. (Nourishment, pp. 25-26)
And it’s very refreshing to find a poet in contemporary, acutely bullying times, quite openly accepting that to be helped is not a sign of weakness, but rather a strength of character to take the first step towards healing from some kind of loss and trauma.
You found me on the edge of the world
where only tumbleweed and lost directions fell
spilling into chasm, rendering fallow
land uninhabited by those striving to untender yen
you gathered me into your warmth… (Crocus of their heart, p, 28)
Successful, satisfying, and gratifying love—even one that hurts—is Daquin’s raison d’être in this collection. It’s, in fact, the most heartening and realistic quality of this winsome collection. I couldn’t help but remember Rihanna’s song, The Way you Lie (2010). We all seek love, and few get it, though the yearning remains till we die, and some may endure pain to get and retain what we believe might be love, not lust. One cannot forget, for example, Princess Diana’s quest for true love. And judging is not in the realm of poets and their outpourings. The last poem in the book, The unseen world, charmingly captures this emotion, leaving the reader pleased that in this abnormal, chaotic, war-strewn world, there is some prospect for humans to feel loved, cared for, wanted, and safe.
If I could starve for want of you, I believe I would. For no moment passes with satisfaction, unless in some way, you exist on its marble periphery
My love; your eyes bewitch my life blood, kindling the charred rejoinder of hope, a poppet to your sorcery, emerging deep forest
When dying comes for me, it’ll be your face I kiss, feverish and familiar, your preternatural smile haunting my passage, faithful ghost, mine
In this place. In each other. A languid, yawning soft space between, the unseen world.
Daquin employs a variety of poetic forms: free verse, short stanzas, long stanzas, some non-rhymed couplets, and some poems having a combination of single lines and stanzas. To me, this suggests poetic liberty to express itself in the manner the poet chooses. There is no artificial attachment to any form, which is clearly reflected in Daquin’s choice of words, poetry topics, and her attempt to draw readers to the disparities that exist, especially in love.
On each page of the book, a butterfly greets us, symbolizing freedom, rebirth, faith, and transformation. Daquin’s exquisite collection is the epitome of a renaissance that most of us seek to emerge from scathed yet still trudging forward from each failure. That’s the hallmark of brave people, and Daquin’s collection is a nod to gallantry and survival in an unequal, selfish, and cruel yet prospectively utopian world.
Two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated (22,23), and Tagore literary prize finalist 2023, Anita Nahal is a writer and academic. More on her at, www.anitanahal.com