“the hole / through the thought of the hole”: A review of Brian Tierney’s RISE AND FLOAT

 
 
 
 
 

The drive through the mountains was one of interminable rain, the picturesque fog that collected in the dips between valleys transforming into a deluge in a matter of moments once we got on the road. As the car muscled its way through the downpour, one of my hands clutched at the upper bar for dear life while the other splayed open the pages of Brian Tierney’s Rise and Float, a poetry collection I’d been on the lookout for since the announcement that it had won the Jake Adam York Prize, as selected by Randall Mann. I had picked it up earlier that day from Split Rock Books in Cold Spring, resolving to read it when I returned to the comforts of my Syracuse apartment. Then, I read the first poem and was immediately disabused of that notion. The work demanded attention, it demanded a witness. I was more than happy to oblige. I read the book in one delightful (albeit harrowing) sitting, awkwardly scrawling notes in the margins in blue ink to match the cover as around me, the sky fell down. When the rain cleared, I hardly noticed; I was that entranced. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s hard to pinpoint Tierney’s exact magic. It seems to me that instead of a mastery of one singular skill, the poems of Rise and Float deal in a convergence of them, some of which have already been commented on by the book’s blurbers: the technical mastery of diction, the pinpoint precision of the collection’s syntax, and the speaker’s unequivocal voice, which emerges, Athena-like from the collection’s first words. The book begins and ends with the interior, but it considers it from myriad angles: the opening and closing gestures, a love poem that doubles as an elegy, is one that places the reader situationally in a landscape marked by absence. Cars come and go, one the opening poem remarks on that “went white as the head of a match, and was gone.” (2) In my mind, the car carried the speaker with it; the car becomes a vector for Tierney’s speaker in which to document that disappearing landscape, which Tierney’s speaker traverses with compassion and solemnity. Tierney’s work is an exploration of the gaps in collective memory: “Near the wall restraints, stains only butchers would’ve known / about. Rusting holes. Holes where holes are not supposed to be.” (6) A derelict psychiatric hospital becomes a place of rumination on a great aunt who was held there, a cafe with “textured walls / painted eggplant” (7) becomes the place where a relationship between father and son is in danger of fracturing, and then when the father dies, the speaker asserts he can “trace for you the mountain / later, we scattered with his face.” (14)

There it is: the fracturing. Tierney’s work is a poetics of fracture. It is intensely interested in the elegiac, many of the poems referencing the deaths of close relatives, yet makes space to honor that impulse while still firmly rooting itself in the living world; ergo, his poetry by design fractures in the divide between the two poles and searches for balance: “Other winters, other / screams: my cousin Kristen’s limp right hand / fanned open near the paint can in the suicide scene.” (9) I should clarify immediately that Tierney absolutely achieves this balance, and makes room for complicated moments of religiosity to boot. Thérèse, Saint of Lisieux rubs elbows with images of Christ as “a bird / just about to fly; a cheap reproduction / you could hold in your hand.” (40) As someone who was raised by intensely atheist parents who has only just started to probe the beauty of what religion can be, Tierney’s work is some of the most introspective I’ve found in this new quest of mine. Maybe it’s because Tierney acknowledges that religion can be ugly: Golgotha is “bare and unbeautiful” (40) in the poem “Preamble with Pilgrimage Inside” and the speaker writes in “All Stars Are Lights, Not All Lights Are Stars,” “I see heaven / is not a place, it’s a concept for pain, a pattern of snow / on municipal metal stairs I’m ascending now, / leading nowhere I know but a good place to lie / down.” (47)

It’s a talented writer indeed who can invoke the multiplicity of religion well; in my mind, it’s akin to grabbing a knife by the blade and being surprised at the well of blood in your palm. Additionally, Tierney’s poetics can be appreciated for their candor as well, especially in putting heaven and pain in the same breath. Tierney’s mentions of religion become rueful overtime, the poem “Polyphagia” carrying the poem’s dramatic action by “measuring / emptiness, to see at what depth even god turns around,” as well as the poem “Judas” ending with the assertion “Jesus was a liar.” (48) And while we might expect such a conclusion from a poem that invokes the biblical figure synonymous with betrayal, it still comes as a shock. There’s a certain nihilism at play here when it comes to religion, one that’s entirely understandable when combined with the elegies in the book. It’s deft and it’s subtle and it’s relentlessly effective as a stylistic tool.

There’s such joy and satisfaction in knowing you will be able to find new things to appreciate about a collection every time you read it. Rise and Float is that rare and kaleidoscopic poetry collection that is continuously unfurling into new possibilities; there will always be a new angle to consider. I’m already excited to reread it a second, a third, a fourth time, and I very much look forward to whatever Brian Tierney has to share with us next.

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is a writer from Maryland by way of Brussels and Berlin. They are the author of the collection Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023) and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023.) The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, their work has been published or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, Crazyhorse, Poet Lore, Beloit Poetry Journal, and others. They’ve been nominated for Best New Poets and Best of the Net, and are a third year in the program. You can find more of their work at www.kathrynbrattpfotenhauer.com

 
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