Triste, Mourning Stories
by Lisa Marie Basile
Dancing Girl Press, 2013
30 pages / $7  Buy from Dancing Girl Press

Lisa Marie Basile’s chapbook is a collection of persona poems chronicling the loves and losses of a group of mostly women. Basile’s writing is sexy and intelligent; these characters live and breathe and fuck. She delves deeply into their psyches, making her poems immediate and real, but also accessible. Grief and longing and love turn her characters’ worlds into magic; even little details gain immediacy and meaning. As I read this collection, what stood out was the power of Basile’s images, which are often stark and compelling because of their meaningfulness. Basile captures emotion and meaning beautifully through these images. Here is a sampling of images – one line from each page of the collection:

Triste: Redux. Lines from Lisa Marie Basile’s Triste, Mourning Stories.

You find in-grown wings within my chest cage. Forget the color of wheat alongside the track. She envisions bodies doing the foxtrot after expiration. He is smooth and pretty like ivory, but false like winter. Once I thought I saw you at the market buying plums. You’re always not in the dark, and always not in the light. A small brown mouse runs between my feet.

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