The five poems from Rachel Mallino’s ANTI published by Gold Wake Press as an echap take the names of anti-depressants as their titles. More difficult than identifying the meaning of these titles is describing the relationships of the poems’ lush contents to their titles.
At times they seem to detail the states which these drugs are intended to oppose. The phrase “afghan gloom” with its delicious consonance in “Venlafaxine”, for example, evokes one who suffers from depression huddled under a crocheted blanket. A similar image appears in “Sertraline”: “We own twenty- / four hours to bed down and you’re / / already full inside: bed-sheet / burier . . .” Here depression is complicated by a grandiose, almost manic tone, and the question of who exactly “you”, “we”, and “I” are. Such a manic tone may be a side effect of an anti-depressant and is suggested once again in “Trazodone” with the speaker’s talk of being “too electrical”.
Of course, even without side effects, not every treatment works. The opening lines of “Bupropion” seem to suggest a treatment that has failed, that doesn’t prevent depression from getting into the mind, doesn’t prevent the reuptake of norepinephrine and dopamine as this drug is supposed to. “Escitalopram” suggests withdrawal with a voice that has a “buzzing” and possibly hallucinatory head asking for wares from the punnish “[p]ill pauper”.
The difficulty of assigning one poem-title relationship to this collection complicates the relationship between the poem titles and collection title. Does ANTI merely echo the fact of these drugs being anti-depressants, or does it suggest an opposition to them, an anti-anti-depressant tract?
Neither of these interpretation does justice to the beautiful intricacy of these poems. Rather, what Mallino has created is an image of the liminality of depression, an in-betweenness that persists even as one tries different treatments, suffers side effects, or goes off meds that may or may not have worked.
Reality is messy. It is always good to find poems that reflect this truth in language that creates both striking images and luscious sounds when read aloud.
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