Gorgeous Freak by Julia Poole
Reviewed by Drew Pisarra

“Gorgeous Freak”
Poetry
Deep Vellum Publishing, 2024
$17.95, 148 pages
ISBN: 978-1646053094

Gorgeous Freak: Pandemic Palpitations

There’s something startling and endearing, hopeful and sly about Julie Poole’s new poetry collection Gorgeous Freak. A poignantly seriocomic series of epistolary poems, Poole’s second book achieves an unusual intimacy via equally unusual means – namely, by repeatedly addressing an unmet lover. This curious device forces us, her readers, to cast ourselves as attentive confidantes, potential paramours and fellow seekers while acknowledging Loneliness as the author’s primary muse. Somehow it works. And why not? Aren’t ballads for imaginary sweethearts akin to those for real ones? Isn’t an object of desire basically a human being fictionalized by want? Sometimes, the biggest difference between what’s true and what’s pretend – when it comes to longing, lust, and new love – may be the forthrightness of the delusions.

As Poole herself writes in “letter # ?”, her opening missive: “Step 1 create a loving / entity / Step 2 introduce yourself / to this loving entity / Step 3 give this loving / entity a name.” Some might posit that the poet is actively engaged in some kooky, spooky manifestation process. An argument surely could be made. More likely, however, Poole is poking fun at such a notion. After all, her book’s dedication asks: “To my future soulmate / Where the eff are u?” From that point onward, Gorgeous Freak suggests that while absence may make the heart grow fonder, given time this very lack may make the mind go insane. Consider recent history. 

As you may recall, Absence – with a capital “A” – was especially pronounced during the pandemic’s darkest days and before that, Trump’s presidency. For many single people, not only were family members in shortened supply but potential lovers were nonexistent. Conversation was increasingly telephonic; touch, telepathic if you believe in such things. Fittingly, Poole’s poems – written from 2016-17 – seem to occupy the negative space on page after page. In narrow columns composed of short phrases, often slicing down the center of the page, her verses suggest a crack in the paper; a narrow, irregular wedge that exists as much in between as it does on the foreground. At times, these missives resemble free verse that accidentally got its left alignment kneed or elbowed. Other times, the poems seem to drift to the side or curve like a spine in the middle of a gentle stretch. At their most extreme, Poole stacks the words – one, two, three at a time – as if assembling a literary Jenga tower. These particular entries register as perilous, balancing acts. 

But is it the poem – or the poet – that can barely hold it together? Look at the opening of “letter # 14”: “After an earwax / evacuation everything / is loud / and crisp / the leaves / my footfall / the birds / conversations / the trickle / of sprinklers / It’s like being / naked / The stream / has a new / music / Friday / traffic / home”. Here and elsewhere, Poole forgoes the bland brutalist block of modern prose poetry in favor of shapes like Shish Kebabs and abstract Rubin vases – those Op Art images in which two faces in profile and a silhouetted urn flash back and forth before our eyes. And so, “letter # 29” resembles a tiger mask or a pair of men’s underwear, depending on your perspective; “letter # 12,” a wrinkled tie and a caterpillar on the move. Admittedly, there are poems unconcerned with shape, quick comical interruptions that jar, jolt, and jeer amid the longer sequence. The totality of “letter # 28” is “Video Game Thoreau / ?”; “letter # 35,” “Bright / Squirrel!”; and “letter # 85” “no bee / no bee no / bee nooo”. Such brief encounters register as a lightbulb moment, an OCD episode, and an insect update of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy respectively. Meanwhile, “letter # 23” is simply a pedometric chart with side commentary (“yay!”).

As we continue through Gorgeous Freak, the vision of The Mysterious Other fades in and out. Does their omnipresence explain the tree with testicles? or the fog with a mouth? Eventually, the world itself seems to court and rebuff us. Poole’s universe is one of weirdness and wonder, a place in which we’re seeking to understand something; a sidestreet in which we hope to encounter someone dearer than dear, right around the corner. Then again, maybe the “gorgeous freak” of the title isn’t some secret soulmate yet to arrive. The “gorgeous freak” is us. Well, maybe not all of us. But some of us. Namely the outcasts, the outliers, and the oddballs, the poets, the dreamers, and the dropouts, the also-rans. There’s an area outside the mainstream for the truth-seekers. Per “letter # 5”:  “Loneliness / is a biscuit / even a dog doesn’t want.” And yet, Loneliness tastes pretty sweet here. Savor it while you can.