Cody Stetzel | Like and Not Helen: Review of The Ghost Wife by Esther Lin

Cody Stetzel received his MA in Creative Writing in poetry from the University of California at Davis. While from Rochester, New York, the former upstate & northeast hermit has replaced his slow-moving winter energies with the vitality of the west coast. His work has appeared in The East Coast Literary Review and Neovox: International.

A Folio of Chapbook Micro-Reviews
October 28, 2020
Edited by Stephanie Kaylor

Cody Stetzel

Like and Not Helen: Review of The Ghost Wife by Esther Lin

The Ghost Wife by Esther Lin Poetry Society of America, 2017 Still reeling and steeped in grief over the sudden loss of my own mother, of course Esther Lin’s The Ghost Wife (Poetry Society of America, 2018) appealed to me with its dazzle and mythos of loss and losing. The chapbook very much feels like the story of this heroic figure — combining aspects of longing and desire with artistic sensuousness — as legend is created. Lines like, “the night-cool / pastoral / inside my body / a secret,” and, “and how she tended her love during those charred / nights as she considered her line” show breadth and variety, plentifully. But what most affects me is how in this chapbook, I learn and want to believe in this rich and complex understanding both in this Ghost Wife, as well as the plethora of ghost wives throughout China. The translators, cooks, youngest daughters, and fables. In the titular poem, Lin writes, “Become a wife. / That is a metamorphosis / worth of legend.” The dance Lin invokes throughout the work between the desire to rebel and individuate and this irresistible pull for becoming creates a tantal of dramatic irony, marking the work and making it all the more unique in second reads. A chapbook! Good glory. This writer. Visit Esther Lin's Website Visit The Poetry Society of America' Website

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