Wade Stevenson’s Love at the End reviewed by Andrea Syzdek

Wade Stevenson’s Love at the End reviewed by Andrea Syzdek

Love at the End (BlazeVOX, 2021), Wade Stevenson’s newest book of poems, is a continuation of what the poet does well: exploration of self, spirituality, love, trauma, and creativity through lyrical poems. In this collection in particular, the primary strength is a captivating voice-driven energy that fuels the poems and creates a steady momentum that keeps the reader engaged all the way through. In Love at the End, Stevenson also excels at image-making, rhyme, rhythm, and meditation that all contribute to the complexity of the poems.

“Being is so Extensive” is a particularly strong poem because it addresses a “you” with intimate care as it explores spiritual/philosophical ideas about how the self contends with existence. Here is the first part of the poem:

Being is so extensive and multiple today, why make
An encyclopedia of everything that is?
The real is what is good. Don’t contaminate yourself
By trying to say everything at once.
Just go on acting like a mad man
Until you break the coffee cups.

The combination of image and statement here is quite interesting and complex. The speaker starts by asserting that the mere act of being is heavy and multidimensional and then asks: “why make / An encyclopedia of everything that is?” This suggests that the “you” being addressed seeks to classify the notion of self in a form that can be known in a concise way, but the speaker goes on to say: “The real is what is good. Don’t contaminate yourself / By trying to say everything at once.” Here, there is the sense that the person being addressed not only wants to classify the self, but explain the self in a definitive way. Again, the speaker counteracts this by suggesting: “Just go on acting like a mad man / Until you break the coffee cups.” Lunacy becomes the solution to overthinking—let your mind go wild and engage in a little destruction. The primary images: “encyclopedia” and “coffee cups” are specific but work against each other particularly because the coffee cups are being broken. Both are containers: one holds knowledge and the other holds coffee, but to break the coffee cups is to get a physical release. Once this is done, the speaker continues: “The only recourse / Left is to move into the realm of the mind.” This seems contradictory, but by going into the mind rather than trying to catalogue and explain it is an opportunity to understand the psyche better. Here is the rest of the poem:

Forget the dangerous mixtures, lies
And their hard-edged policies. Stay away
From the amphitheater of fear. You’re able to walk
Both on water and land. Which was inconceivable
Before today. You can even fly high
On your poet’s ink wings. If you forget the directions
Just start to breathe, accept the monstrous
Beauty of just being here.

 

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Read a sample from Wade’s book or buy a copy here