Beast Meridian by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal Noemi Press, 2017 Full disclosure: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal and I went to the University of Houston for undergraduate studies around the same time. We weren’t amigxs or anything like that, but we were aware of each other’s existence and respected one another’s work, at least on my end (Vanessa, it’s totally cool if you don’t remember me.) Point being: it’s fucking exciting to know that many young Latinx writers are getting their due, especially ones I’ve known at some point, however much in passing. Anyways, if you haven’t heard of Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017) yet, where you been? It’s one of the hottest books of poetry out now (thus you can find other reviews of it, particularly a great one by Sara Borjas with Connotation Press that goes way into the poetics), so I’ll try to take different approach. Chinua Achebe, in No Longer at Ease, defined the tragic as: “…never resolved. It goes on hopelessly for ever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions.” Are there tragic and traumatic issues explored in Beast Meridian? Absolutely. But Villarreal’s book is far from a tragedy. In fact, it’s one of the most victorious books of poetry I’ve read in a while. Let me explain: Experimentation is a form of power. To take something and play with its very being/essence requires ingenuity, creativity, and vision. However, forced experimentation is an aggressive display of power; forcing someone to do something is dehumanizing. Poetry is an experiment of language. Form, then, is one of the ways a poetic experiment can be contained. Form is power. Imposing form is an aggressive display of power that can dehumanize. This line between experimentation and forced experimentation is one that Beast Meridian explores, how one remains human despite force and how one flourishes through experimentation. I mean, just opening the book and going through its pages is participating in this experiment. There are: two epigraphs, one from Frantz Fanon and one from Gloria Anzaldúa; then a dedication; then a poem labeled an elegy that ends with, “this is how we said you would survive:”; then a photograph; then a table of contents; then the section title; then the rest of the poetry. Already, there’s this process that Villarreal places us in that references history and plays with layout. No book of poetry exists in a vacuum, most books following in the standard format set forth by capitalist and academic guidelines. Fuck all that. Put a poem, epigraph, and picture before the table of contents, why not. A good reader will take all this in and understand the history and context of a work that made it into existence. When you get to the innards of Beast Meridian, dawg… Just flipping through its pages you’ll see the many ways a poem can be, ones you’ve probably never seen. I’ll stick to one, “Assimilation Rooms.” The poem, just looking at it, you’ll see a lighter font color for a block of text in Spanish with darkened font for text in English peppered within it. They work together, though you may read the English text on its own, an acknowledgement that much is lost when one chooses to ignore a language. (I can’t tell you how much that’s happened to me, this reviewer, in an MFA workshop where people refused to do any work in reading the Spanish in my work and offered erasing or translating as a real piece of advice.) The rest of the poem is in English, nearly each stanza or block or page of it having a footnote attributed to it. Some of the footnotes seem to be more poetry, some history (fact or fiction?), and some legit research papers and reports it seems. One of the footnotes is several footnotes stacked on top the other, making it essentially illegible, a form of erasure through overexposure. What is it erasing exactly? More texts from research papers on the effects of migration the mental health of immigrants and generations thereafter. In a book about mental health, this use of research that seems to tell an answer being erased becomes a metaphor for mental health issues in POC communities. The problems are there. They’re there so much and there’s research and history, piles and years of it. For what? It gets erased or misdirected (in terms of POC communities being seen as deserving of poverty or subpar treatment, a misdiagnosis at best and genocidal at worst) or simply ignored. It’s so there, these problems, that they become lost in the basic struggle for humanity many communities cling onto. It’s this experimentation with the layout of a poem that facilitates the words, a playfulness that shows a willingness to fuck with institutional practices that demonstrates ingenuity and strength. Beast Meridian is an experiment that humanizes a person and allows them to flourish. Is that not what we should strive to do as a nation? We do not serve form and language; form and language serve us. That may be a no brainer, but then why is America the way it is? The publishing industry? Education? Media? Laws? It’s this beautiful experimentation with a form that has been problematic for POC, institutionally and linguistically, that belies power, victory. I haven’t talked at all about the actual words, the poetry, which goes to show how fucking packed this book really is. Maybe I’m talking too much about Villarreal and/or my ideas around Beast Meridian rather than the poetry. Perhaps I should be maintaining that ‘border’ of speaker vs. poet vs. reviewer. But what is that worth, really? For me, this separation in literature has always served the white imagination:

• They’re not really racist, just writing as someone who is.
• If writers can’t write as racists/pedophiles/murderers/shitty human beings without criticism, how can we empathize with the estranged in our society?
• [Insert writer of color] is more than just their race, don’t you think?

It’s kind of tiring to see this blasé attitude from white writers writing as something they’re not or from a viewpoint they can never have and believe they can’t be held accountable for it or criticized for the sake of artistic expression. This book carries the weight of a being, a family, a force ready for change. There’s pictures from a past, including one of Villarreal labeled: “Gulf Pines Psychiatric Hospital Patient Intake Photo, 1996.” There’s this erosion of that conventional relationship between poet and poetry that is amazing to witness. Again, maybe I’m overstepping my boundaries as a writer, reviewer, reader, etc. But as well, Beast Meridian challenges many notions of what poetry can accomplish through the deconstruction of form and language and the reconstruction of identity and history as a result thereof. Sure, you can write in quatrains or sonnets or free verse, but what about the ol’ ‘fuck all that?’ When male writers do it, it’s neat-o. When non-male writers of color do this, it’s a marvel to watch because it will always be new as poetry has often been used to assert masculine ingenuity. In other words, Beast Meridian makes me wonder how I can tear all this shit around us down, and here’s a blueprint. I’m not going to say this work is ‘necessary,’ as I’ve always thought that was an underhanded compliment, how you’d describe bitter medicine. This book is good. Great. Amazing. Maverick. Beast Meridian isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, angry, hopeful, loving, experimental, dense, mythic, academic, Latinx, feminist, weak, strong, anti-institutional, sentimental, cross disciplinary, playful, estranged, concrete, fluid, etc. It’s all of those things at once. The book doesn’t end on a note of victory per se, but the poems’ and Villarreal’s willingness to experiment is what keeps Beast Meridian from being a tragedy. This is more than poetry. The book is a person, despite what’s happening in America. That’s victory. Visit Vanessa Angélica Villarreal's Website Visit Noemi Press' Website

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