There is something ineffable about Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ voice that I’m have a hard time pinning down, so let us begin with the facts. Seeing the Body is a collection of poems that wrestle with the fallout after the death of the poet’s mother. The collection is split by a series of tender yet haunting black-and-white photographic self-portraits, where the poet’s body frequently echoes an aspect of the landscape or setting, managing to be both strikingly individual yet part of the whole. None of these photos gives us a clear shot of the poet’s face, although we do get some blurry glimpses at hair and shadow and in one photo we get her profile. This defacing that occurs in the photographs feels less like an evasion or shy attempt to shield her ego from scrutiny and feels more like a literal defacing caused by grief. In fact, Griffith’s body—caught in contortion, in motion, sometimes naked, in fetal position, on the floor—is painfully and powerfully vulnerable. Her body is shrunk by the landscapes and settings, the immensity of them, the fullness of their blank space. In the last photo of the series, for example, she is dwarfed by an immense tree. She stands with her knees bent, her gaze looking up at the leaves and branches, as if in supplication. The tree is in full blossom, a commonplace symbol of life and age, and here it seems to spiritually invoke the lost mother. The photos have a way of quieting the spirit, asking the viewer to listen to the silence, the absence, to melt into the landscape, the moment.
And from this emptiness springs Griffith’s voice, bursting like a hot spring, so crystal sharp, clear, and fluid, sometimes scalding, sometimes rejuvenating to the touch. I have no eye-popping analysis of these poems, though I’m a sure a more deft reader and writer would have something to say of the forms and strategies she employs. Instead, let me share with you a few of my favorite poems from the collection and why I love them. Selecting poems was a difficult exercise because literally every poem packs a punch, but here are my faves.
“Chosen Family”: At a time of extreme isolation in my life, this poem makes me feel less lonely. It invites me to hope for the new kin I will fine, rather than mourning the kin I’ve lost. The anaphora of “when you find your people” echoing throughout the poem makes the discovery of your chosen family destiny, not possibility. Much like Danez Smith’s Homie collection, this poem reminds me what makes friendships holy. This poem will hold you until your new kin finds you.
“Color Theory & Praxis”: One of the things that impressed me the most about Rachel Eliza Griffiths when she ran a poetry workshop at the Frost Place was her ability to critique with love. When white colleagues brought racially problematic poems, she found a way to tenderly hold their insecurities yet forcefully challenge them to improve. The same ethos and tenderness is found in this duo of poems, forcefully responding to a white artist’s notorious painting of Emmett Till.
“My Rapes”: This is likely the most painful poem in the collection. Here, Griffiths starts by analyzing the ways “rape” poems get talked about in creative writing classrooms. “A teacher pulled his prize-winning teeth across the shoulders / of my poems. ‘I gave you a hard critique,’ he said, / then offered to save me from becoming / a terrible poet.” Further on, “A woman I loved told me / to use a clear verb. ‘Was it actually Rape? Like Rape-Rape?” Griffiths focuses on the jaded, tactless mistakes people make when holding such a deep part of someone’s pain. This strikes me because creative writers often like to pat themselves on the back for how much their work helps others humanize and understand different people. Here, creative writing culture does the opposite: the skills and techniques we’ve been taught actually make us more likely to dehumanize our fellow writer and treat them callously. I’ve been in the room when “rape” poems were discussed and been crushed by the overly literary perspective of the workshop facilitator. For that alone, this poem is one that needs to be taught more often. To teach us to undo the most disconnected parts of our pedagogy and relating with one another.
In the heart of the poem, Griffiths asks, “Why will we try to praise a mutilated world & leave / our mutilated women in the margins to fend / for our worth beneath moonlit headstones? / I want to believe I am urging survival, / that I live the same impulse of the great poets / to praise suffering, to feel the merciful world shimmering / in spite of its injury, but women everywhere / face our executioners, however kind or coarse.” Here Griffiths takes a hard look at the reality of what healing means and what poetry can offer. She goes on to wrestle with her mother’s responses to her experiences later in the poem and wrestles with those just as fiercely and honestly as well. For this poem alone, this book is worth its weight in diamonds.
“Husband” : This poem wrestles in the sticky tensions between the ideal of love and love in practice, the ways we fail to measure up in ways we hoped in our most important relationships. I love this poem for the space it creates for brokenness. “Forgive the hours you waited in our ruin / of happiness. We always knew I was wild, wrecked,” the poem begins. As someone whose circumstances have given my partner more than her fair share of grief, I I am grateful for the honesty of this poem, the way it redeems our aching love.
“Mirror”: In this short dagger of a poem, Griffiths riffs off of Sylvia Plath for a poem about a mirror. “You immaculate bitch of glass,” it begins, with a line the cut straight to the heart of your self-hate. There’s a wrestling with the self, with the shiftiness of it here that hits me like a deep breath of air, massaging the heaviness in my shoulders.
“Father” : Griffiths is particularly masterful at long, one-stanza poems. You can feel her line breaks in your throat while you read. There’s a resoluteness, tenacity and vulnerability in this poem that is exemplified throughout the whole collection. Here, the poet begins with a memory that makes us care for the father and his well-being before moving to a painful interaction with the father. This juxtaposition of these two moments feel hot in my face. What I appreciate most about many poems in this collection is that they teach me how to grieve my dead: bravely, embracing as much as I can of their complete selves and honoring them that way. In this collection, you won’t find any empty platitudes about how time heals all wounds or the countless other lying things people will attempt to comfort you with when your mother dies. Instead, you’ll find a sister willing to sit in the storm with you—through every cloud and thunderclap.
I recommend this book for anyone interested in poetry, black feminism, anyone who is grieving, anyone interested in the interplay between photography and poetry. Seeing the Body is fierce and powerful as crystal.