Daryl Sznyter’s debut collection of poem, Synonyms for (OTHER) Bodies is a raw, honest book that takes the reader beneath the poet’s flesh.
The narrator’s voice in the first poem, “The Virgin to Gabriel,” is both vulnerable and powerful. Sentences rub up against one another. A passage that begins “My knees bruise softly” may end with the somewhat aggressive “clean up / your mess / leave / go / bother god.”
Sznyter plays with hard and soft language throughout the collection. She pays homage to poets such as Anne Sexton and Eileen Myles. In “Bad Girl” there are hints of Olga Broumas, “architect of my body.”
The title poem exposes the reader to an intimacy that is curt and painful. “I am fat and I am invisible / I go out to eat in groups / & the waitress always / seems to forget my food.” It’s as if one is reading lines out of the poet’s diary. Perhaps these poems are so discomforting because we have all felt this otherworldly disappearance of self.
Sznyter’s poems speak to family, her relationship with her hometown, and the stumbling beginnings of her romantic life. She finds strength in her body (“I Skip Work for Adult Ballet Class”) and resilience in who she is not and who she is becoming.
In this first collection, not only do readers hear the chilling clank of bone on bone, the rattle of prescription pills, and the sweat dripping down a sunburned back, but we also hear a voice that describes two worlds: one where the speaker was not permitted to speak and one that creates a world where she will no longer be silenced.
Daryl Sznyter is a brave new voice in the literary world.
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