William Allegrezza. To Hush All the Dead (Buffalo, NY: BlazeVOX [Books], 2022).

 

Despite the title, this is a very expressive and lively collection. Word constructions appear, happen, and grow, even if they might refer to post-life situations. Throughout one is anxious to know who or what these "dead" might be: deceased loved ones? unfortunate victims? impertinent others? inner voices seeking expression? These nicely organized poems comprise an up/down dialectic of trouble/solutions. There is a phrase thirty pages in concerning "hush my dead" but the various implications of dying/death occur passim, in each of the six sections of the book.  If you like the lyrico-cartographic approach, the first section is the most attractive: Maps and Map Making. The mood is moved by down notions of malaise, resignation, ennui, angst... but poetic discovery overcomes all. The second section involves "The Waiting" and senses of bereft continue in a "wicked world". The lexicon of loss and insufficiency provokes further pondering.  Section three "Exploring the Story" invites writerly contemplation. Telling can help with any feeling of the situation not being right. The division of "Decisions, Flags, and the Return" is desperate for imagination to guide one through failure, destruction, losing, decay... and up moments of hope and illumination. Section "Shorts" is light in spite of darkness and draws all strings together. The final section "Haibuns" is a high. Death is there, wind is blowing, and maps recur in their evident significance.  This journey has been mapped and concluded with so much: waiting, deciding, clarifying, traveling, perceiving, linking, inter-relating.  Did the lyric voice achieve his goal of hushing the dead? All of them? You read. You wonder. You decide.