Florence by Bess Cooley

Bess Cooley’s debut collection Florence is tender and intellectual. The speaker of the poems is helping care for a grandfather with dementia while also undergoing testing for seizures. Heady stuff. But the poems are confident and clear and gorgeous. Mirroring her grandfather’s disappearing memories, Cooley deploys erasure poetry with a twist—she erases poems found earlier in the collection. It’s effective and interesting. The whole book is. Buy here.

From “Florence”

May Day and I’ve come home

a stranger to my grandfather.

The schoolchildren are twisting

tulips from tissue paper and pipe cleaner,

pretending they smell like tulips.

My grandfather tells me of a bunch of goldenrod

he’s named Florence because he sees

a face in it. Some things, he tells me, I make up

for a little joy, but there is no

denying what is there. Still,

when he leaves home he kisses

the goldenrod goodbye. He tells me he misses here. . .

From “My Mother Asks for Advice about What to Do with Her Father’s Ashes”

. . . My sister tells us you can make

a tree—the bone-white ashes growing

into green, supple branches,

little blooming buds, oh,

I will visit every day until they open.