Review by Jacob Butlett
University of Wisconsin Press / April 2022 / 80 pp
Thunderhead features lyrical narrative poetry that reveals the darker side of Emily Rose Cole’s upbringing and present-day struggle to reconcile trauma. This trauma stems largely from a verbally abusive mother, now deceased. Cole employs persona poems as well, forming striking parallels between her past and the lives of imaginary heroines, most notably Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz.
Cole does not saturate her poetry with images invoking pity. Instead, she illustrates the complex, human struggle to form loving bonds with those who do not reciprocate love in healthful ways. By far the most enduring motif in Thunderhead is Cole’s conflicted relationship with her mother. In a multi-part poem, “In the Year of the Divorce, My Fascinations Include: Surrealism, The Dust Bowl, and The Wizard of Oz,” she writes:
The day he left, Daddy twisted a nut around each
of my small fingers. Now your hands will shine.
That night, I shrieked awake:
steel girdled my skin, all that shine swallowed up
in blood, metal rings notched snug under my knuckles.
When Mama came, it was too late
to cut them out, too late to do anything
but rock her hands over mine and teach me
how to bind my split-up fingers into fists.
Cole reworks The Wizard of Oz into an analogy for her own childhood: her father is no longer at home and her mother, stubborn and vexatious, tries to control her. This becomes even more apparent in poems like “Somewhere Brighter,” in which Cole reveals the time her mother “reddened my cheeks / with an open palm.” Or “Four Poisons,” in which Cole’s mother ruthlessly shames her decision to not return home for Christmas, causing her to think: “My heart is a shipwreck of ice”—a terrifying, despairing image symbolizing her desire to love her mother no matter what.
Subsequently, Cole’s mother is diagnosed with cancer and she herself is diagnosed with MS. Wishing to live in world with less turmoil, she imagines herself as Dorothy, who longs to return to Oz, in “Self-Portrait as Dorothy Gale”:
Soon another storm will kick its heels
in my face—gunmetal clouds closing
into thunderheads, pines hurling down
their sap-ripe ribs. I enter the field alone,
rain lashing my eyelids shut, scarecrow
my arms, and speak to the cyclone like a mare
I used to ride when I was young.
I tell it, I don’t want to be here.
I tell it, We are the same kind of runaway.
I tell it, Take me back.
However, Cole knows she cannot magically leave her reality behind like a character in a children’s book. She must endure. In “Love Poem to Risk,” she addresses the concept of risk as though it were a person:
You touch your teeth to my pulse
and claim nothing good happens without you.
I still can’t say you’re wrong.
Even though a life with risks will inevitably lead to moments of disappointment, a life with no risks is no life at all. To persevere can be a sign of courage. In “MS Nocturne Without a Magician,” Cole addresses her MS with curiosity and volition:
Dear body, get your shit together because if we keep going
to the bathroom this much, we’ll never sleep more than an hour
at a time. Dear body, let there be another way out of this
than through the chute of a syringe wasping in our thigh.
Determination can be romanticized. But having MS or remembering a difficult, deceased parent is far from romantic. Cole does not end Thunderhead on a resounding note of hope and bliss. Indeed, it is not her responsibility, nor any other poet’s responsibility, to sugarcoat complex feelings. In “Love Poem to Myself,” Cole reminds herself about the importance of harnessing a durable self-esteem—a breathtaking reminder to all readers:
Emily, I give you back
your name, shuttered
like honeysuckle between
the bindings of your books.
That’s how much I love you.
Don’t forget.
To love means opening one’s soul to the possibility of heartbreak. Enthralling all the way through, Thunderhead reads as a testament to passion itself—an invitation to recognize the bond between suffering and intense desire.
Jacob Butlett (he/him) is an award-winning gay author from Dubuque, Iowa, who is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Some of his work has been published in The MacGuffin, Panoply, Cacti Fur, Lunch Ticket, Rabid Oak, and Into the Void.