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A review by brice_mo
gutter rainbows by Melissa Eleftherion
1.5
Thanks to NetGalley and Querencia Press for the ARC!
Melissa Eleftherion’s gutter rainbows is a tricky collection—it’s a thoughtful response to traumatic experiences, but the speaker's moments of lucid catharsis rarely reach readers.
Much of the book revolves around objectification and abuse, and there are moments that are really effective. “GUTTER FLOWER” is an appropriately sour depiction of the way girls are sexualized from an early age—each phrase upending the one that came before. Similarly, “the interiority of female misogyny” dances between specificity and abstraction in a way that accentuates the pain of its subject matter.
Unfortunately, the nature of the topic demands that the poet write too obtusely at times, so large parts of the collection feel withholding to the point of amorphousness. One can sense that the act of writing offered release, but the act of reading almost does the opposite—it captures something alternately unclear or self-loathing. There’s a poem called “Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel,” and your gut reaction to that title is probably a good gauge for how well you’ll be able to handle the book.
Despite those critiques, I think the book’s final third—"cleavage”—is really inspired. In this section, the speaker parallels their life with iconography derived from a variety of minerals. It’s a rhetorical device that feels generative and never gimmicky, and Eleftherion unfolds it in a way that is sure to reward re-reads as we get closer to the speaker’s core.
Melissa Eleftherion’s gutter rainbows is a tricky collection—it’s a thoughtful response to traumatic experiences, but the speaker's moments of lucid catharsis rarely reach readers.
Much of the book revolves around objectification and abuse, and there are moments that are really effective. “GUTTER FLOWER” is an appropriately sour depiction of the way girls are sexualized from an early age—each phrase upending the one that came before. Similarly, “the interiority of female misogyny” dances between specificity and abstraction in a way that accentuates the pain of its subject matter.
Unfortunately, the nature of the topic demands that the poet write too obtusely at times, so large parts of the collection feel withholding to the point of amorphousness. One can sense that the act of writing offered release, but the act of reading almost does the opposite—it captures something alternately unclear or self-loathing. There’s a poem called “Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel,” and your gut reaction to that title is probably a good gauge for how well you’ll be able to handle the book.
Despite those critiques, I think the book’s final third—"cleavage”—is really inspired. In this section, the speaker parallels their life with iconography derived from a variety of minerals. It’s a rhetorical device that feels generative and never gimmicky, and Eleftherion unfolds it in a way that is sure to reward re-reads as we get closer to the speaker’s core.