Review of Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage: Literary Biographies by Virginia Aronson is a keeper.

As explained in the Introduction, the poems in this collection focus on some well-known poets who have caused suffering and suffered themselves. Each poem is narrated by the poet, or a lover, spouse, muse or other intimate. Having read Smiling Little Hooks, her biographical poems related to Sylvia Plath, I knew she was up to the challenge. Aronson keeps her empathy ability set on eleven.

Now add her well-honed poet’s eye, a filter through which she renders powerful metaphors and depth perception. Her poems lay out what happened in the lives of these revered authors and those descriptions are smoothly linear yet have the unexpected potency of seemingly harmless cocktails: Long Island Iced Tea, Cosmopolitan, Mai Tai.

I don’t want to give them all away but here are some favorite zingers: 

In a poem speaking for T.S. Eliot’s first wife, she writes: And when living is done/ he told me one firey night/ he would like his bones/ flung into my grave.

Speaking for Robert Lowell’s widow: It’s the worst to see/ a man, a woman, an estate/soaked in the black suds/of disaster and sold off/ to help pay off/ debt, help, rooms/rented out while I wrote/of the abyss he fell in/without me.

For Anne Sexton’s therapist she channeled this: I was the one who/ she later wrote/ walked from breakfast/ to madness at the sad hotel / while she raged in her own/ glass bowl…

And for Dylan Thomas’s wife:  Drink was his temporary escape/ from the slavery of his calling/ there was no escape/ for me/ from Dylan/ his werewolf heart/ full of black blood/ until he died/ from drink.

It seems a familiar story: when mortals follow muses down that path—be it writing, making music, painting…other forms of self-expression, the ride can be rocky and fraught with collateral damage.

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Tim Bryant’s has two published novels, Blue Rubber Pool (2018) and The Bird in Your Heart: A Carolina Sea Island Story (2023) with a third, The Stained Glass Mustang, scheduled for publication in May of this year through Unsolicited Press.

Virginia Aronson’s Collateral Damage: Literary Biographies is available here.