Aracelis Girmay’s Green of All Heads is a truly astounding journey past mortality, to a realm beyond simple grief. In this book, Girmay takes us by the hand and leads us through her own personal dreamscape. Her poems vary in length and style, ranging from pages and pages of lyrical imagery to tight, almost prosaic lines, transcending the confines of reality and venturing into surrealism. With this book, Girmay accomplishes something rare: capturing perfectly the feeling of existing as a ‘head’ bound by a body, the disorientating combination of soul and flesh that embodies the human experience. In her poem, “I Go To The Dentist”, she writes, “I am making an effort to live. I am trying not to wear my body down like a shoe.” There is something enchantingly encapsulatory about the way she writes– what it means to be human, summed to the most ubiquitous level.
Girmay’s language makes us feel like a child again, learning about death as if for the first time. Her writing is benedictive; it blesses us and forgives us, it reminds us that we are living and breathing and alive. One of the most shocking moments from this collection is in the poem “Your Words Again”, in which Girmay incorporates a diagram with the words ‘Dead’ and ‘Alive’ on opposing sides of a dotted line. Something about seeing this visual representation is startling, but her words bring to it a beautiful catharsis, narrating the experience of death as being carried over this line in a chair.
Rightfully, Green of All Heads has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Voeckler Award, and is a necessary read for this (spring) season. I think that there’s something spring-esque about Girmay’s writing, a pensiveness about creation that is often brought to mind when, outside, dead ground begins to bud and tiny flowers appear.
“Wet, dark petals… It is the green of tears, the green of flies. They pollinate me with memory.”
Girmay reminds us to look towards small symbols of life, despite the inevitability of death, or maybe even because of it. She pulls out childish impulses and holds them up to a new light, painting them as the purest and holiest means of experiencing this green existence.
Hayes Keith is an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, where she is earning her bachelor’s degree in creative writing and has received awards for her writing. When she isn’t writing, she spends most of her time reading, trying new recipes, and taking care of a very demanding tabby cat named Star.
