Young, Andy Museum of the Soon to Depart: Poems. Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2024.

88 pp. $20.00

Divided across three sections, or perhaps curations would be a better word, Andy Young’s Museum of the Soon to Depart is more than just a book, it is an admission ticket that can be redeemed for a tour guide directing readers through a museum that is revelatory, haunting, and pulsingly alive. As blurb writer Sean Thomas Dougherty shares, “…Young offers a ticket to travel this burning world…lifting us to someplace, if not perhaps better, at least where we can witness for those who need us….” In bearing witness, Andy Young’s poetry is simultaneously both living and artifact, and her collection Museum of the Soon to Depart is a talisman for those seeking refuge.

From the very first poem, “Grief During Carnival Season,” Andy Young sets the tone for the collection as she writes: “I could sleep for centuries/when that darkness comes,/and one day, we all will.” The intention isn’t to roll over and accept fate; it’s a reconciliation with inevitability. One of the great strengths in this small section is the use of the word “and,” which reveals how both elements exist together as one, not one or the other, but both, and through that seemingly micro-decision, Young’s collection begins to drop its anchor.

“Shattered” is an interesting meta-like poem serving as ekphrasis for the cover art by Josephine Sacabo. The piece, “this mother and child,” is riddled with its “piss-hued light,” and exposes a missing nose, a key detail suggesting the beginning stages of losing oneself or perhaps a stark reminder, not everyone is built the same. About halfway through the poem a truly magical moment happens. Take a look:

            is it gold or pale yellow

            splintering through the glass

                        where once a bullet

                        where once a rock

                        where once a violence

            a violin

            tried to—did it—pierce through

                        to their holy rest?

It’s a striking poetic move to turn the repetition into something new entirely—both violence and violins—existing in the same world. How one moves through their splintering is something Young alludes to this closer to the poem’s end:

shattered glass slivers

      a shard sticks in the fingertip

you must tip it toward the light

to pluck it out

The subtle movement of the lines toward the center, the white space of the page, is nuanced, and the sonorous repetition of the s-sounds is also at play here, too. And just when you think that you have your breath though, Young’s close to this poem challenges the notion of “tip[ping] toward the light” all together. She writes:

            no he is not thinking he is counting

            the marks our days

                        through the shattering

                        he sees us

In this poem Andy Young encapsulates so much so quickly, in part because of the blurring boundaries indicated by missing punctuation, but also in part to her poetic genius being put on display. It’s a revelatory poem in the collection because of the challenging it does—reconciling with how a child sees “through the shattering.” It is a truly profound moment in the book. It made me think of a Poetry Northwest essay from their “On Failure” series; Nadia Colburn writes the following:

It’s my hope that, despite all our failures, we can still understand our situation, speak authentically from it, and act.

Young’s poems “answer” this hope through their ability to not shy away from the difficulty and shattering but to face them head-on, and it’s through that vulnerability, something new comes to the table: strength. This is revealed in “Second Clinical Trial,” where the speaker’s mother is at the forefront again. Take a look at this memorable opening:

            My brother sends a picture: our mother

            holding a tube up through her soft white hat,

            smiling. I think she has lipstick on.

            She’s just had a hole bored into her skull.

This poem is another example of Young’s attention to detail and intention to bring those details to life. It’s a testament to the focus that roots her poetic oeuvre. One of my favorite lines of the poem is also a favorite in the book:

            …There’s nothing for you

            if you don’t have a tether to hope.

The poem captures a fascinating moment in the scheme of contemporary medical procedures that uses a genetically-modified version of the poliovirus to treat brain tumors. The doctor in the poem even quoted to say “It’s like polio was made/for this purpose.” However, it’s not without its own complications, as Young writes:

            But healing brings swelling.

            Two weeks later she’ll black her eye falling,

            barely able to shuffle, slurring

            from swelling in the parietal lobe.

The repetition of the -ing end sounds starkly, keeping us readers in the gravity of the situation. Similarly, the sheer wonder of the ordeal is on display when the narrator looks over the brain scans:

Something presses against the supramarginal

something or other that tells you where

you are in space and against the spot

that registers empathy. Wait. There’s

a physical location for empathy?

It can be damaged? I don’t know shit.

I don’t know how she has her faith, don’t

know who she’d be without empathy.

The poem is a reflection of the book’s earnestness and humanity. There’s a bit of charm in that I don’t know shit line that embraces tenderness in a profoundly human expression. The first section also explores the worldliness of the witness Dougherty alludes to in his blurb—taking us to Barcelona, Cairo, and New Orleans, balancing the tight rope between the living and the dead—in unrelenting fervor and attention. It, again, speaks to the significance of “and” I alluded to earlier and shows us how these experiences can, because they do, coincide.

One of the sharpest daggers in the collection is housed in the second section; the poem’s name is “night terror,” and it’s one of those poems that sneaks up on you when reading a collection and, before you know what’s hit you, you wonder why your cheeks are burning.

No?

Just me?

Couldn’t be.

This poem embodies the theme of the museum exceptionally well. I could very easily see this poem hanging in the gallery because it’s such a focused, honed-in poem that left me gasping.

Many of the poems housed in the second section are lensed with the same embodiment as nearly all of them are some variations of ekphrasis. One such poem is “Night Walk,” which takes its title from a dizzying piece by Myrtle Von Damitz III. The poem, written mostly in couplets, reads:

            A parade is coming—no it’s a crowd

            flushed back across the bridge. Pregnant

            woman, old man, limping child, a tall one whose

            skin’s too tight; the bones poke through, obscene.

The painting reminds me intensely of the Dave McKean artwork housed in Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (DC Comics, 1989) with its layering and complexity. The poem walks us through a hospital-like scene, riddled with more questions than answers. A call to attention rather than strictly a call to answer.

Museum of the Soon to Depart covers a lot of ground—both literally and figuratively—and demands active attention as a reader. Andy Young’s poetry functions as both museum and curation. What results is a truly fascinating collection—one that will undoubtedly stay with me.