Susan L. Leary's fourth poetry collection, Dressing the Bear, won Trio House Press's Louise Bogan Award and was written in memory of her brother, Brian Lee Kilpatrick, who died by overdose in 2020 at the age of 29. By turns angry, wry, and brokenhearted, the poems vividly portray the lasting effects that addiction and grief can have on families.
Leary (A Buffet Table Fit for Queens) often addresses Kilpatrick directly. She explains in the opening poem, "If, Elsewhere," how composing autobiographical verse might offer her closure: "That you might finally/ leave me, Brother, let me/ tell you who you are..." She describes Kilpatrick as practical and poised for violence, someone who "walked through the world with a knife/ strapped to his hip. A boy of noble purpose, ready/ to stop a bullet or free the rubberbanded stems// of store-bought tulips." Innocuous memories from Leary's brother's early years return as irony. In the titular poem, Kilpatrick's grade-school sweetheart reappears at his funeral, while "Clean" contrasts fresh laundry with his inability to "kick drugs." The county jail where he spent time is a recurring setting.
Although her mother and professor try to cajole her into writing about happier subjects, Leary remains fixated on loss; blue is the predominant color. Repetition and alliteration reinforce her morbid focus, as when she likens ants to "pitch-dark pallbearers." Along with frequent water and animal metaphors, Leary includes prose paragraphs, riddle-like phrases, and two lines borrowed from William Carlos Williams. Ampersands usually replace "and," adding serif flourishes to the page.
Though they all circle bereavement, Leary's intense poems flicker with variety. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck