Alex Carrigan
Bio:
Alex Carrigan (@carriganak) is an editor, writer, and critic from Virginia. He has edited and proofed the anthologies CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, 2018) and Her Plumage: An Anthology of Women’s Writings from Quail Bell Magazine (Quail Bell Press & Productions 2019). He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Empty Mirror, Gertrude Press, Quarterly West, Whale Road Review, Stories About Penises (Guts Publishing, 2019), Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear (Et Alia Press, 2020), ImageOutWrite Vol. 9, and Last Day, First Day Vol. 2. He is also the co-editor of Please Welcome to the Stage...: A Drag Literary Anthology (House of Lobsters Literary), which is currently accepting submissions (https://houseoflobstersliterary.wordpress.com/submissions/).
Review: Third Winter in Our Second Country by Andres Rojas
Reviewed by Alex Carrigan
In his newest poetry collection, Andres Rojas assembles a series of poems that illustrate the long-lasting effects of memory and how they manifest in our connections to the natural world, objects, and people around us. Third Winter in Our Second Country contains two sections, each with their different approach to this examination, and do so in a way that presents a fascinating point of view. These pieces offer a potential insight into the mind of their narrator as they draw these connections and attempt to find understanding and perspective within.
In Part I, the majority of Rojas’ poems focus on memories of the distant past, echoing to the narrator’s childhood and developmental years. These pieces often focus on more mythological, historical, and religious figures in order to highlight the development of the narrator. In “I Am Prometheus,” Rojas writes as the Greek mythological figure in a way that illustrates the weakness and strength of the figure who, while he is punished for his transgression against the Gods, is still powerful in his own right (“I am not the body / nailed to the volcano. / I am the volcano / holding her breath.”) Others, like “St. Augustine at Ariel’s Island,” use the figure to connect to the collection’s usage of the body and nature, writing “Told us / the spirit is a ship at sail / invisible in fog, the flesh / a skiff’s trace lost to waves. Told us / the storm was near, but that we / had been made ready:…”
Part II continues many of the ideas brought forth in the first by shifting the pieces to the present. While many of the pieces continue to write about the body, nature, and memory, these poems tend to present anecdotal poems and snapshots of specific moments. “Summertime” is set around a pair looking for a ring that fell into some grass, contrasting the woman who is adamant to find it with the narrator who speaks more abstractly:
“…her purse-flashlight bright / only in night so dark, / so dim it seems distant, a promise, /light waiting for itself. / I tell her its beam shines / like milk after hard fast, / a debt forgiven, if unpaid. / Shut up, she says, and keep /looking.”
Many of the pieces in Part II, in contrast to Part I, tend to show the end of life instead of the start or rebirth. Some like “Dead People’s Things for Sale,” harken back to the earlier poem “Confession,” where the latter poem has the narrator speak about their grandparents and learning about their deaths, while the former centers around an estate sale and speaks of the impermanence of life (“On it they shared figs from a tree / in their rental garden … / I was there. I remember. / The tree is gone. So is the garden, / the block plowed flat for a hospital’s garage.”). An interesting through line through the entire collection is Rojas’ use of language and dialogue. Like in “Summertime,” there are many poems that use dialogue to enhance the piece, contrasting the narration of the poems with how they see and hear others. Other poems, like “Flying Wallendas” and “Learning to See in Another Language” use wordplay to examine the English language and how we view the meaning behind certain words, such as in the former poem with “I say / skywalking, and no net / can ease that plummet— / sky-walk, / sky-fall.” Overall, Third Winter in Our Second Country is a powerful collection that covers a wide range of moments and visuals as it examines how memory can play into setting, the body, and how we communicate with one another. There are a lot of layers to examine and there are sure to be many ways to read some of these pieces, but overall, Rojas’ book offers a fascinating glimpse into the language of memory and how certain details resonate. It’s a vivid and complex collection that will hopefully continue to bring new memories to light as one reads it.
“…her purse-flashlight bright / only in night so dark, / so dim it seems distant, a promise, /light waiting for itself. / I tell her its beam shines / like milk after hard fast, / a debt forgiven, if unpaid. / Shut up, she says, and keep /looking.”
Many of the pieces in Part II, in contrast to Part I, tend to show the end of life instead of the start or rebirth. Some like “Dead People’s Things for Sale,” harken back to the earlier poem “Confession,” where the latter poem has the narrator speak about their grandparents and learning about their deaths, while the former centers around an estate sale and speaks of the impermanence of life (“On it they shared figs from a tree / in their rental garden … / I was there. I remember. / The tree is gone. So is the garden, / the block plowed flat for a hospital’s garage.”). An interesting through line through the entire collection is Rojas’ use of language and dialogue. Like in “Summertime,” there are many poems that use dialogue to enhance the piece, contrasting the narration of the poems with how they see and hear others. Other poems, like “Flying Wallendas” and “Learning to See in Another Language” use wordplay to examine the English language and how we view the meaning behind certain words, such as in the former poem with “I say / skywalking, and no net / can ease that plummet— / sky-walk, / sky-fall.” Overall, Third Winter in Our Second Country is a powerful collection that covers a wide range of moments and visuals as it examines how memory can play into setting, the body, and how we communicate with one another. There are a lot of layers to examine and there are sure to be many ways to read some of these pieces, but overall, Rojas’ book offers a fascinating glimpse into the language of memory and how certain details resonate. It’s a vivid and complex collection that will hopefully continue to bring new memories to light as one reads it.
