Kasey Jueds' The Thicket: A Movement Through Pain and Tenderness,
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In the story when she wakes, the story is over, and so everything can begin. These are the final lines of “Briar Rose,” the third poem in Kasey Jueds’ second full-length poetry collection. Aptly entitled The Thicket, this collection draws readers into a world of both the everyday and the otherworldly—both the joyful and the painful. Often using the natural world to explore human nature and human relationships, Jueds’ newest book asks readers to look closely at what surrounds them and to re-evaluate what is beautiful and what is broken. The Thicket does not shy away from loss or sadness; instead, Jueds addresses difficult subjects and yet maintains a sense of tenderness and admiration for the world. While the subject matters of Jueds’ poems vary throughout this collection, her poetic tone remains consistent. In a voice that is somehow simultaneously hushed but urgent, it often feels as if Jueds imparts secret knowledge to her readers. She writes: In a book in another language there is a word for the way you must make shards of your longing which was already broken and thus complete. Here, Jueds conveys this idea of understanding the unknowable by positing that—somewhere—in a non-English language, there is a word for an emotion that feels impossible to articulate. By utilizing white space on the page, Jueds amplifies this feeling of searching—using the page to slowly guide readers toward the answer. Indeed, much of the writing that makes up this collection seems to search for answers. Jueds poses questions directly to her readers—or maybe, more broadly, to the universe itself. In “Drought,” for example, she writes: What do I do with this nameless sadness I must have watered just enough: never quite flowering nor ever sufficiently tindery to set alight. Here, readers see this same focus on the complexity of human emotion portrayed through a nature metaphor. The “nameless sadness” has been tended to just enough—to neither grow nor die, but rather to exist in stagnancy. Many of the poems included in this collection examine this feeling of a “nameless sadness.” Still, these poems seek to move past stagnancy and toward hope. The Thicket often explores difficult liminal spaces—including the transitional years experienced after early childhood. Jueds deftly writes of the nature of adolescence and the precise moments in our youth and lives that shape us in “Litany (Easter)”: River where, come summer, my sister & I would float our child-bodies over the deep place by the bend, reach our feet down to find the sandy bottom and fail. In this poem and in others, Jueds recalls what is now gone—childhood, emotion, love, lost dreams, moments in time—and her ability to focus on what is lost encourages readers to look back at their own experiences, the moments in time that, though passed, continuously ripple and resurface in their lives. “Love Poem with No Mountains in Sight” addresses one such precise moment: As we are always casting ourselves across edges and streets, as I once stepped from a curb just when the icon of the walking figure on the sign began to pulse, and realized in that second that I loved you. This passage shows how the split-second action of walking off of a curb to cross the street can forever be seared into the mind. Jueds’ ability to capture a moment in time is something that resurfaces throughout the collection as a whole; in so many of her poems, she shows that everyday actions and experiences can be stitched with emotion and beauty. So many of these poems address losses, touching on subjects such as 9/11, the death of a close friend, a miscarriage, infertility, and a misplaced earring. Despite these losses, though, Jueds holds onto optimism. In “Litany (California),” she again showcases her ability to embrace softness despite immense vulnerability. Using the metaphor of a plum, she writes, plums opening their skins. By softness. How to equal it. By tender skin inside the wrist, rising beneath the burned place. In these lines, readers again see this seamless blending of pain and tenderness. Using the image of overripe fruit, Jueds creates a scene brimming with emotion—one that shows readers how to remain soft and open despite hardship. Jueds often explores being in nature with a “you” character, illustrating that healing is possible through human connection and time in nature. “At Cape Henlopen” reads: Later you crush juniper berries and hold your fingers to my face: gin, that muscled scent sun and forgetting keep falling through. Here, readers witness the “you” character share an intimate moment in nature with the speaker. By invoking such a precise sensory detail—the scentof crushed juniper berries—readers are completely drawn into Jueds’ world. The Thicket examines the complexities of our humanity, using nature as a tethering force. From the collection’s title, readers are introduced to the idea of “the thicket”—a word that resurfaces again and again. Jueds’ poems search through the metaphorical thickets—of loss, of time passing, of grief—with the understanding that, no matter what, we will break through the dense brush and reach the other side. |
Kasey Jueds is a poet living in New York State. Keeper, her first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press (2013). Her second book, The Thicket, is forthcoming from Pitt in November 2021.
Marissa Ahmadkhani's work has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine and serves as Assistant Editor of The West Review.
Marissa Ahmadkhani's work has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine and serves as Assistant Editor of The West Review.