POETRY | HAVING BEEN AN ACCOMPLICE BY LAURA CRONK

HAVING BEEN AN ACCOMPLICE

★★☆☆☆

Many of the poems in this collection focus on themes of new relationships / intensity of developing crushes, infidelities, even motherhood. There's also a fair amount of nature references / metaphors that get worked in. The poems in Part 2 seem darker in tone, sometimes even a little angrier, quietly so. A few of the poems are written with an almost medieval legend flair, scenes of modern day relationships held up to imagined bold kings, steely queens, brave knights, a kingdom challenged. One example of this being "The Bride Queen":

Now I'm starting to have a more provincial sight.Married woman queen, bride queen, queen of two lands that must be managed, the rest can go to hell.

Queen in a kimono, queen scrubbing the tub, queen of a shopping cart haughtily choosing what to buy, queen of an erotic little family, queen of scattered underthings, queen of the hairs on the floor, queen of a plate of chops, queen of deux, two, two.

The kingdom slips, oh well. People will carry on, one being cruel to the next.

Queen of this, just this.

There were lines here and there throughout the collection that stood out to me, the ones capturing me the most being "Horse Neck-Deep in Water", "I Have Humbled Myself Beneath the Night Sky", "Having At Least Dressed Appropriately" (I do love Cronk's titles for her works!) and perhaps my favorite, those lines from a piece "Selected from The Wheel of Night", as it's noted:

"His marriage to an unknownseems not to affecthis ability to appear in public,accept invitations, make jokes, unapologetic"

But overall, I gotta say I was not overly impressed. There's a weird rhythm to many of the poems that I personally didn't find enjoyable. There were also several times were I was left feeling like "yes, these are words strung together in a verse format... but they're ultimately not really saying anything"... nothing that I see sticking with me in the long term.

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