Rachel Mennies

Here are letters from one woman to another woman - Naomi - whom she loves. The letters are in the form of beautiful poems. The letters are dated from 2016 to 2018, the narrator writing about her day, her life, her desires for Naomi. Some of my favorite lines:

"All my life, I have measured my days by the gestures of a beloved."

"When I imagine touching you I rename myself: animal."

"I long to trade our body heat back and forth, raising both our temperatures."

And a couple of my favorite overall poems:

December 11. 2016
A friend has just left her girlfriend.

Each time there is the beginning, she said, where I am best - where I am ways sure.

The trouble, she said, is with everything in between.

I once thought all I ever wanted was the trouble [...]

December 14, 2016
[...] Naomi I have built my life in the shape of a house that my grandmother would know how to keep.

Realizing this I long to unbroken it. [...]

*****
The Naomi Letters sings to me, and the sound is like no other. I adored these letter poems. I devoured them. I savored them and I will cherish them. I am so glad to have had the opportunity to read them.… (mehr)

The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies is a rich, beautiful collection of poems in the format of love letters to Naomi, the lost love of our narrator. The epistolary format lends an extra level of intimacy to these sensual poems, and they read as confessions of love, grief, and acceptance. “The problem with certainty lives in its instability: how this afternoon I sliced open a peach at its seam, finding it gone to mush. I licked each wet wrist before I threw the peach in the garbage. Yesterday it would have been delicious — the day before, inedible. What I’m trying to say, Naomi, is you found me at the exact right time.”

Over the course of a year, we are alongside the narrator on a journey through her relationship with Naomi, and it’s dissolution. Both celebratory and mournful, The Naomi Letters reminded me of my all-time favorite book, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. I loved it.

Thanks to the publisher, BOA Editions, for an advance copy of this book.… (mehr)