Jessica Goodfellow reviews Sisyphusina at Barrelhouse
here are excerpts:
“How many poems there are about male aging in the canon? Their proliferation makes the implicit assumption that the male experience is the default for aging. For example, searching the Academy of American Poets website yields twenty-four example poems on the topic, only two of which are by women. Where are the poems about menopause, the loss of conventional beauty markers, and the invisibility of the aging woman in society? Dentz, in seeking to make room for such female experiences, finds that exploring and bending space is a necessary response, as is the augmentation of words with images and music.”
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“On top of dizzyingly original arrangements of words and forms, this collection offers artistic and musical collaborations, which are better experienced than described. Either a QR code at the end of the book or an online link will take you to the sound performance “Aging Music,” performed by Pauline Oliveras, which was co-imagined with Dentz’s Sisyphusina. Additionally, a poem-film based on Dentz’s “saidst,” jointly made with Kathy High, is available online. With so many modalities for the witnessing the exploration on women’s aging, Dentz has more than done her part to record this complicated experience, available vocabulary notwithstanding, for the future canon.”