NATALIE SHAPERO'S POPULAR LONGING, by MARISSA AHMADKHANI

              This life—I’m angling 
              to remain in this life as long as I can, being almost 
              certain, as I am, what’s after—  

This line from Popular Longing, Natalie Shapero’s third full-length poetry collection, touches on the subjects of passing time and mortality—two themes that are revisited numerous times throughout the book’s entirety. With pervasive wit and swift movement, Shapero explores the sometimes mundane—but often complex and heartbreaking—nature of existence. These poems range in subject matter from death, to consumerism, to nostalgia, to grappling with the everyday as Shapero invites her readers into her world—one of nuanced humor and contemplation.  

Often, the poems in this collection move from humor to darkness and from the political to the personal in mere seconds. In “Tea,” for example, Shapero writes:

              I always thought I’d made 
              peace with THIS PLANET, and yet here I am 
              shoving all my cash in the jar
              marked ANYPLACE ELSE. There isn’t enough 
              money in the world. 

The dark humor in this poem shines through as Shapero meditates on time, history, and the grueling effects of consumerism on the human condition. Likening a tip jar to a desperate means of leaving Earth, her speaker wryly recognizes the inescapability of her situation, which ultimately evokes a feeling of helplessness. Observing the two jars—one marked “this planet” and the other “anyplace else”—the speaker puts her money on leaving, shoving her cash “into the jar marked ANYPLACE ELSE.” 

In “Good Share,” Shapero showcases more of this wry humor:

              Drink while you can, 
              because I heard from a dead guy 
              there’s no alcohol in Heaven. 

              I also heard no alcohol 
              on Earth. If you’re drinking right
              now, buddy, you’re in Hell. 

With a straightforwardness that weaves through the majority of her writing, the poet examines issues like life and death and Heaven and Hell with piercing wit. And, while much of this collection features this more comical tone, there are also moments of somber reflection. In “California,” Shapero explores trauma and memory through the state’s unchanging seasons, which often seem to blend together:

              For years I would wonder whether 
              the man who attacked me— 
              in his memory, did the event of it 
              persist as a dull sort of flash? 

She later adds: 

                                                    I haven’t 
              spent real time in California, but friends 
              of mine who’ve moved there 
              say it’s challenging, absent the changing 
              of the seasons, to remember when things 
              took place. 

The poem ends with this focus on “remembering” as Shapero writes: 

              You can almost imagine 
              the whole thing was somebody else. 

As her speaker grapples with the aftermath of “the man who attacked [her],” Shapero explores how we process trauma. This focus on California’s landscape allows for the speaker to process her traumatic experience in a way that recognizes memory as a complex and sometimes painful part of life. Later, in “Fake Sick,” she further explores the idea of memory when she likens the past to a storefront we must close in order to escape our histories: 

              I’m ready to stop remembering. The trouble is 
              there’s nobody else who can do it. 

As the poem progresses, Shapero employs vivid imagery and an almost-desperate tone to convey the difficulty of escaping difficult memories or trauma. She writes:

              There’s no other person

              to wake in the slate dawn, drive into downtown,
              locate the recess, collapse the gate, maneuver

              the thing out of view. There’s only you. 

As the collection continues, Shapero’s speaker further contends with the pain and difficulties that often accompany existence. In “Long Wedding,” she writes: 

                                                  I was thinking of the times
              I have attempted to exit my body. I was thinking 
              of how I’d had nowhere to go. I was wishing 
              for a smaller body hidden within my body, 
              a smaller site to which I might retreat. 

Here, Shapero explores the idea of shrinking or disappearing completely—the feeling of searching for some escape from the passing of time and of one’s life and experiences. Indeed, many poems in this collection seek to cope with these human realities through lithe and masterful movements in subject matter and tone. In “Pennsylvania,” the final poem in the collection, the poet writes: 

              I’ve since ceased my believing in death— 
              There’s no such thing. 

              There’s only a kind of brownout, 
              the whole of the globe turning 

              ​off for a moment, then shuddering 
              back, the same as it was, 

              except one person short. 

Likening death to a “brownout,” Shapero examines death from a distance. Rather than believing in death as a finality, instead it becomes a momentary fading. Returning to the humor innate to her work, Shapero ends the poem with the lines, 

              And then before long, an utter new 
              ​person is born. Somebody worse.

In its entirety, Popular Longing explores universal concerns, including mortality, memory, and the difficulties of existence—and Shapero explores these themes in a way that is full of wit and freshness. With her distinct voice and the richness of the subject matter, she draws her readers in with her vivid storytelling and her dark yet relatable humor. This expansive collection serves as a reminder to us all of the complexity of life, but also of the humor and levity gleaned from our very human experiences. ​⋆

Natalie Shapero is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection Popular Longing. Her previous collections are Hard Child, shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and No Object, winner of the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. She is Professor of the Practice of Poetry at Tufts University, and she has previously worked as a civil rights lawyer and as a literary editor. She lives in Massachusetts.

Marissa Ahmadkhani holds an MA in English from Cal Poly SLO and splits her time between the Bay Area and Costa Mesa, CA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine and serves as Assistant Editor of The West Review.