Review: No Good, by Sophie van Waardenberg

Following the publication of her chapbook, ‘does a potato have a heart’ in AUP Poets 5, and numerous appearances in literary journals across New Zealand and the United States, Sophie van Waardenberg’s first full-length poetry collection arrives with rightful anticipation. No Good offers readers a more complete picture of the poet’s emotionally insightful, tender voice, with added complexity and breathing room.

As its title suggests, the collection considers what it means to be ‘good’, in what a person can do, and how they can find good, particularly in grief. The first poem, ‘Poem in Which I Am Good’, sets the parameters for what the speaker constitutes as goodness.

'Everybody I love will live forever. Everybody I love will love me.

My shoes are clean and comfortable. My body does not matter. ...

Everybody I love will live forever. Everybody I love will live forever.'

What has always been charming about van Waardenberg’s work is her ability to find precious delight in everyday minutias, and effortlessly blend amusement with melancholy. The first refrain, ‘Everyone I love will live forever’, is repeated twice in the final lines with childlike hope, as if saying it over and over can will it into truth. Between these wishful lines are rather simple desires: light trousers, soft linens, comfortable shoes. This is what’s needed to feel content, and they are such small and tangible things they make the speaker’s wish for immortality and reciprocal love feel just as easy. We want this for her but we know it’s impossible, so the proceeding poems are an attempt to come to terms with the inevitable, and make do with what one has.

In the middle of the collection are a series of ‘Cremation Sonnets’, in which the poet memorialises her father.

'I cannot accept this ending. I have fallen from the highest ledge. I will never land. So what if I am safe? I am not.'

These poems, at the core of the rotten apple gracing the collection’s cover, expose the central ache of the text – the loss of a parent at a young age. Here, we see the speaker accepting the unceremonious certainty of death, and enduring its extraordinary wake. She confronts the reality of losing a loved one with unadorned realism.

'They tried to say you’d exceeded expectations. Maybe in efforts towards love But not in dying. ...

... Maybe in commitment to the wristwatch. To the spirit. To the ocean. Not in dying.

...

Then you couldn’t love me. Then you died. Then they burnt you.'

No Good tracks a reflexive coming-of-age. It is a portrait of girlhood with all its growing pains; the awkward body conciousness, the blooming of a new relationship, then its collapse. The promise of a new city and the difficulty of making it a home. The distance between ‘home’ and what you love. In the shade of all this is the effort of a normal and successful life after tragedy. Several poems are undercut with contractions, as in ‘Damp Song’:

'I praised you I said you were perfect too many times.

But you have to forgive me, I didn’t mean it. I meant the thing behind it. '

Throughout the text, there’s often a shadow under what is said. The opposite of death is not life, but love, and the absence of life means the absence of love. This is the problem we must contend with, and in doing so, the poet toes the line between what is enough and what else is possible. What of the world can be romanticised when all romance is seemingly lost? How much can we risk, and how much do we stand to lose?

She doesn’t have all the answers, but uncertainty is part of the deal. Van Waardenberg accepts this with ‘the openest of arms’. Her poetics are technically sound. Her optimism is remarkable. With each poem, she turns her focus to the minor details, like she’s noticing something you don’t and is inviting you to share, beckoning your attention as if to say: this is beautiful, it is quiet, it is everywhere, it is me.

Reviewed by Melanie Kwang