I read Nazifa Islam鈥檚 Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems (Shearsman Books, 2021) with an open and eager heart: Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers and I was curious about Islam鈥檚 approach to her work. Drawing from Mrs. Dalloway and The Waves, Islam has crafted a beautiful collection. Often when reading Woolf, particularly The Waves, I have gotten weighed down by the density and complexity of Woolf鈥檚 prose. Islam has netted beauty from these two texts, not so much simplifying but crystallizing Woolf, homing in on some of the central motifs from both texts to create something that is at once its own as well as in conversation with its origins.
Divided into three sections, the collection explores the meaning of self, particularly in relation to others, as well as in relation to its own growth, shaky foundation, and even its obliteration: there鈥檚 a way in which, by crafting this 鈥渟elf鈥� through erasure, the constructed, and thus unstable, nature of self emerges in these poems. Most of the poems are from The Waves and rely on a first-person speaker, whereas the ones from Mrs. Dalloway are in third person, exploring a seemingly romantic relationship between a man and woman. And, while there is some forward momentum across the book鈥檚 sections, its energy is certainly more recursive than linear鈥攄emonstrating an affinity for Woolf鈥檚 own disruption of linear plot.
The poem 鈥淲here They Sat鈥� illustrates some of these central themes:
听 听 听 听 听 He left her years ago. He had expressed
听 听 听 听 听 being with her as unending suffering
听听 听 听 听 听so his coming back
听 听 听 听 听 in this moment is puzzling
听听 听 听 听 听and her voice is not laden with honey.
听 听 听 听 听 He had been her future.
听听 听 听 听 听He was delight itself.
听 听 听 听 听 A reluctant intimacy鈥攊n recollection
听听 听 听 听 听of the past glides into her heart
Here, we see the tension between the masculine and feminine voices that inhabit some of the poems and their problematic 鈥渞eluctant intimacy.鈥� Throughout the book there is a sense that their affinity is fraught, and the poems convey the relationship鈥檚 end. The female speaker must discover who she is outside the bounds of relationship. In a later poem, 鈥淐ast Down,鈥� the speaker notes:
听 听 听 听 听 I will my sense of self to me
听 听 听 听 听 before it perishes.
听 听 听 听 听 Grasping my glass heart tightly
听 听 听 听 听 I emerge among the others
听 听 听 听 听 exultant as chaos.
I see these fragments of narrative as a foothold to larger existential questions: How do we maintain a sense of self 鈥渂efore it perishes鈥�? How do solitude and companionship shape this sense of self? Like the sourced novels Islam draws on, these poems are invested in how language鈥攁nd perhaps a desire for beauty, for beautiful language鈥攕hapes these questions and the self.
Thus, another way to read the collection is as an ars poetica. Throughout the collection, the poems directly reference poetry: 鈥淭he morning they parted he scolded her / for having the pink makings of poetry in her鈥澨� (鈥淣ever Eternally鈥�); 鈥淗ow strange, this poem / how whirling鈥� (鈥淚 Know Permanence鈥�); and 鈥淚 am a bright wild poem鈥� (鈥淭o Clasp Flowers鈥�) are just a few examples. These references reinforce the idea of the self as something structured, though wobbly; as something 鈥渆xultant as chaos鈥� that must, somehow, be contained, or face its own vanishing鈥攁ll issues, and qualities, that seem at the heart of poetry (or at least, this poet thinks so).
The collection suggests that the self is something susceptible to erasure, which particularly comes across in the third section of the book. For instance, in 鈥淲ith Anticipation,鈥� Islam writes, 鈥淚 have lost the appearance of / somebody whole and only feel // a prickly blankness.鈥� And, later in 鈥淪eparate,鈥� she writes 鈥淚 am bone and paper and green hours. / I am nothing. I grow / afraid because there is no end in view.鈥� In these moments, the young, heartsick self we meet in the first section has been transformed by experience, has come to doubt identity as reliable鈥攈as come, in some ways, to be erased.
Erasure鈥攐f other鈥檚 work, as well as of the self鈥攊s tricky business. In 鈥�,鈥� Jeanine Vanasco writes, 鈥渋f plagiarism is to steal the style or expressed thoughts of someone else, then erasure is a psychological lobotomy of personal identity. The erasurist can change another鈥檚 work until it is no longer itself.鈥� By transforming The Waves and Ms. Dalloway into Forlorn Light, Islam has conducted such a lobotomy (though I am of two minds about the violence that word suggests) of the texts as well as of the characters that inhabit them鈥攊n a way the speakers in Forlorn Light are fragments or echoes of Mrs. Dalloway and the sextet of friends who narrate The Waves.
Solmaz Sharif examines the violence inherent in erasure poetry in her essay 鈥�.鈥� In this essay, she suggests that while there are aesthetic and political motivations for erasing another鈥檚 work, these erasures are uncomfortably aligned with the erasures/redactions of political documents: a voice is being silenced through restriction and manipulation. Sharif lists both political and aesthetic/poetic reasons for erasure, and of these, to 鈥淐are for what is left behind so that erasure has an additive or highlighting effect鈥� and/or to 鈥淩ender incomplete a text to invite collaboration between reader and text鈥� seem the most applicable to Islam鈥檚 work, which amplifies themes from Woolf鈥檚 texts and invites collaboration; indeed, Islam states in her afterword that these poems 鈥渇eel like an homage to this writer I so admire as well as a way of authentically expressing my lived experience.鈥�
Any discussion of erasure is a discussion of authority: Who owns a text? Who has the authority to change it, to make decisions about it? Does erasure, by making the inherently appropriative and palimpsest nature of writing more explicit, make it, somehow, more authentic? These questions lead to more questions: Does Forlorn Light silence Woolf, even if it is also an act of homage (are these necessarily mutually exclusive)? Is erasure always problematic, as Sharif suggests, or if done well and thoughtfully, as Vanasco asserts, might erasing be writing, that 鈥渟tyle is the consequence of a writer鈥檚 omissions and the writer is always plural.鈥� And how does gender, race, and ethnicity play into all of this?
Discussion of erasure is the discussion of power and, in many ways, that is at the core of Islam鈥檚 collection: Who has power over us, and how is such power鈥攑ermeable, shifting, gratifying as it might be鈥攁lso detrimental? While on the surface, this collection feels like a series of crushingly beautiful lyrics, I believe there鈥檚 something sharper and seething at the core, something like, as Islam writes, 鈥渞age screwed up in a knife鈥� (鈥淲hile I Breathe鈥�). Here, I鈥檒l return to 鈥淪eparate,鈥� one of the last poems of the book, where Islam writes 鈥淚 have no beauty. / The shock is endless.鈥� The search for beauty seems aligned with the search for self, for meaningful identity; erasure calls into question this premise, complicates it. Forlorn Light is an experiment in poetic craft, in creative reading, and the pluralistic nature of writing; it raises more questions than it answers, in its green hours and red hauntings.
听 |
is the author of the poetry collections Searching for a Pulse (Whitepoint Press, 2013) and Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems (Shearsman Books, 2021). Her poems and paintings have appeared in publications including The Missouri Review, Blue Mesa Review, Gulf Coast, Entropy, The Believer, and Beloit Poetry Journal. 鈥� |
听 |
听is the author of the poetry collection听Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press), Star-Tent: A Triptych (Tolsun Books, 2023), and Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press, 2024). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was named a 2020 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow. |
