“‘the map is a violence’: A Review of Danielle Rose’s ‘at first & then’” by Alexandria Villegas

At the cross-section of memory, consciousness, and physicality lies the self, the nexus of an individual’s personal identity. As we grow older and change, our identity shifts due to altered perspectives, gained through new experiences, as well as through the physical maturation of our bodies. In her debut chapbook, at first & then (2021), published by Black Lawrence Press, poet Danielle Rose analyzes and grapples with the actualization of an identity that is malleable and constantly exposed to public criticism in a profoundly personal presentation that often walks the line between identity crisis, revelation, and heartfelt confession. The author of The History of Mountains, forthcoming from Variant Lit, Rose’s work can be found in such publications as Hobart, Palette, Sundog Lit, and MORIA Literary Magazine.
As a prelude to the chapbook, the “At first” section begins with a quote from Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound, “It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God.” This quote presents the reader with a primer which causes them to contend with the arbitrary reasons we attempt to categorize others for personal convenience, often for the benefit of our own shallow understanding of their personhood. This concept works to introduce us to the contrast between an individual’s personal self and public identity, the versions of their person defined first by themselves and then by others.
This idea is portrayed in “ekphrasis on the ‘most beautiful suicide,’” which describes the end of Evelyn McHale, a 23-year-old woman who leapt to her death from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in 1947, as well as the aftermath. This “ekphrasis” poem that likens the suicide to a work of art opens with a quote from Life magazine following the incident, commenting on McHale’s body in death, which “reposes calmly in a grotesque bier” atop the limousine she fell on. Rose acknowledges McHale’s objectification with the opening lines, “because especially in death / a woman’s body is not her own / if she had been paint / then the limousine an improvised canvas / and the gawking crowds / guests at some bizarre performance.” Using this comparison, Rose contrasts McHale’s desire for anonymity in death with the spectacle she would subsequently be made into. Rose references McHale’s suicide note, the “seven short sentences / where she expressed her need to be nothing,” even citing her final request that people tell her father “i have too many of my mother’s tendencies” as the explanation for why she couldn’t marry and instead decides to commit suicide. Though as Rose points out, in our fascination, “we ignored her wishes” to not be seen and denied her a final right to her own identity since the photograph of her corpse becomes one of the most infamous and romanticized images of any suicide ever. As the poem illustrates, both McHale and her mother Helen, who left the family when Evelyn was a child, “wanted to disappear” from identities of womanhood that were not their own. Ultimately, our attempts to categorize and define them are as fruitless as the effort to remove Evelyn’s corpse from the crushed roof of the limousine, for — similar to her liquefied body that melted like water — her true identity fades away, “slipping through our hands,” to leave us with nothing but “the most beautiful suicide.”
Themes of identity persist throughout at first & then in “this is a trans poem about swans.” Within the poem, the speaker expresses their similarity to a giant wooden swan in the Boston Public Gardens, and the disillusionment that their sculpted, wooden body causes them. The line “i watch families cross the footbridge like balloons let adrift or pigeons darting after scraps of bread'' conveys the speaker’s loneliness and isolation as they are bound to earth in their wooden swan form, unable to fly, while others are free to sail on the wind, unencumbered by the “long journey [of] . . . vertical transformation.” Like the wooden swan, the speaker’s identity is manufactured, seemingly disparate from others because of its objectified nature. As the speaker goes on to state, “i am a swan . . . but I could not pretend to cultivate myself like a garden / this body is something I am forced to touch when I suddenly grasp for love in the middle of the night.” Longing for complete control over their own metamorphosis, the speaker yearns to define their own identity, but they are hindered by the memory of “where this body started.” So they decide to turn, not to “something beautiful like a swan fleeing from itself forever,” but to accepting the possibility of change, their body a “temple under renovation / a pristine surgical center” that offers a life unobstructed by the person they used to be. The imagery of the swan’s “entrails spilling / her flesh cut open with surgical precision” imposes a sort of forced honesty on the speaker, in which they must expose all their imperfections and secrets for the world to see, regardless of their desire for anonymity.
Divided into three parts, the poem “body maps” contends with the perspective of others as they attempt to define the identity of the speaker. In the first section, “body map #1,” the speaker’s face is an unrecognizable map that cannot be categorized, with proportions, “markings of depth and elevation,” that evade the understanding of the cartographer, or viewer. “[T]he map is a violence / because the face is a map” that has changed; the terrain no longer matches the original landscape, making the initial way of understanding the body invalid. The second section, “body map #2,” conveys the disconnect between the speaker’s past and present as their identity has shifted. The memories of who the speaker was is a permanent reminder of the “shoeboxes filled with old photographs printed on old photo paper,” with images, or “body maps,” that no longer represent who they are now. Nevertheless, the speaker is “exposed” from “endless hours of comparison” with the cartographer, acting as audience and examiner, who does not “pretend to hold the same map,” and instead attempts to reference a landscape that no longer exists, sacrificing a new understanding of the speaker’s identity for a nonexistent face. “Body map #3,” the final part of the poem, confronts the expectations that the cartographer’s map places upon the body of the speaker: “i will insist upon the importance of violence      the scrapes / & cuts” created by an unwarranted expectation, or “the map of desire,” that is forcibly compared to the body of the speaker. This committed effort to uphold an already-understood standard of appearance onto the speaker’s face only serves to objectify them, making the speaker a temporary object for observation, rather than an autonomous person who can define their own identity.
The final poem of at first & then, “an inventory of things that have changed,” brings the theme of identity to its natural conclusion as it finishes the transition from grief and judgement to acceptance. This poem is a revelation, as the speaker reflects on those things that have changed through personal transformation. Notably, the objects and concepts listed are not better or worse than they were before: “men staring . . . the color of desire / how I spell my name     my name . . . my tongue       this joy / our love      understanding       my joy      these mirrors       sex / how i know love       & just / joy    joy   joy    joy.” What defines these ideas and the speaker’s understanding of their own life is no longer restrained and marred by grief. Instead, like their newfound identity, it is simply new to them.
A deserving winner of the Fall 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition, at first & then is the story of a transformation following an identity grieving social expectations, memory, and a false sense of self. Providing incredibly personal accounts of wading through anguish and hardship in the struggle to self-actualize and prove one’s own identity, Danielle Rose’s poetry communicates the simple, intrinsically human desire to be authentic, free from the judgment of others and the constraints of the past. It is a journey, characterized by longing, of the “way to perhaps swim forward / after” transformation.

Alexandria villegas

The Editor-in-chief of MORIA’s Issue Seven, Alexandria Villegas is an undergraduate student at Woodbury University, pursuing a major in Professional Writing and a minor in Filmmaking. Born and raised in Los Angeles County, California, Villegas spends her days working, writing, and listening to music.

Headshot: Alexandria Villegas