![]() Her collection is a timely critique of environmental concerns including global warming, forest fires, and species mutations leading to extinctions. harris as the winner of the 2019 Jake Adam York Prize. Smith’s poetry collection was selected by francine j. Instead she pleads, “Tell me the formula.” (pg 70) ![]() The reader must sift through all the filth and beauty to find what they are looking for, as Smith doesn’t give them any answers. As the mystical cover art of Cephalopod implies, the reader is swimming in Smith’s dense stream of consciousness, such a collage of images is presented, probed, and posed. ![]() Time begins to lapse back as the metaphysical reflections all come to an accumulation in the last section. The shocking imagery of swallowing foxglove juxtaposed with an octopus coaxing her bones from the sea floor feels too romantically dark for this point in the witty, philosophical collection. The tone also shifts especially with the title poem, “Self-Portrait with Cephalopod and Digitalis Purpurea.” Smith discusses the serious topic of suicide in budding pubescent girls. Smith switches poetic style from enjambed lines and short stanzas to dense prose and heavy narrative. The jump in time isn’t the only difference in section three. The reader travels back in time with Smith as she contemplates her childhood, especially growing up in Washington state and how its geography shaped her as a person. Smith comes to find more solace in sandy shores contemplating creation through broken shells than an almighty designer orchestrating destruction. Several poems are even written in a religious form: psalm, parable, spell, and meditation. Smith queries and quarrels with a higher power in the second section of Cephalopod, “Dear wrecker / in the ruin, dear great keeper of forecasts / and dust” (pg 29). If the title doesn’t hook the reader, the anti-Ode format will: “the internet, / it knows me, it says / recommended for you :” (pg 10). “Photos of Pig That Appears to Have Blue Fat Beneath Skin Shared on Social Media” is an exemplary poem. She assesses how humans have become so involved in technology, media, and capitalism that humans themselves conflict with nature. What is our position in this world? Smith plunges headfirst into this immense question requesting the reader to reconsider boundaries of society and nature in the first section. Each section Smith takes a deep dive into aspects of her life and experiences with death spanning through time: current, past, and future. After the opening poem, Cephalopod is divided into four reflective sections. This dark humor is sustained throughout Smith’s collection, every so often shining through all her existential crisis. At the same time there’s still this comedic desire to find joy as Smith adorns herself with “pants the color of a sea cucumber” (pg 1) and covers her “mammary glands / with a boneless bioluminescence.” (pg 2) The reader also wants to put on their “cephalopod ring” (pg 1) as if to click theirs with Smith and shout, “Wonder Twin powers, activate!” (pg 1) Because even though the world may end, wearing an octopus shirt can do wonders to remind oneself there are things still worth living for. ![]() With all these building concerns, the reader senses the impending dread along with Smith. Immediately after Gallagher’s quote the reader is dropped into Smith’s first poem, “Ode to Super Friends and Nature Television.” Written in a scattered stream of consciousness, Smith begins to list the things she can’t control from “birds with nowhere to land” (pg 1) to “jungle ants with parasitic skewered brains” (pg 1) to the world’s wobbling axis to stillbirth to ocean levels rising. This is the exact feeling Smith’s poems invoke: the ever presence of death while one keeps breathing in everyday life. Due to Gallagher’s clever line breaks “die” and “live” are stacked on top of one another, appearing in complete tandem. You / could live forever.” Kathryn Smith has chosen a wise quote to enter her third collection of poetry. Self-Portrait with Cephalopod opens with a three-line quote from Tess Gallagher, “You / could die out there.
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