A Tallahassee poet looks at mortality in bold, musical 'Feral Princess'

Tallahassee writer Marda Messick’s debut poetry collection, "Feral Princess," strikes a skilled balance in the assemblage of intense, life-shaping episodes that work to form a broader narrative.

Published by the relaunched Apalachee Press, Messick's chapbook comes out Saturday, Sept. 7, with a reading event at Midtown Reader, 1123 Thomasville Road.

Rarely do we see a contemporary poet this bold in her use of narrative structure: we travel with a central speaker, beginning with childhood and onward through the myriad stages of life until mortality itself looms over the journey like a second character, sometimes nemesis, sometimes source of light.

Publishing: The reanimation of Apalachee Press launches slate of women writers

The larger arc of the book is one that trends toward at a hard-won, fully conscious peace with mortality itself. The book’s mode is retrospective and elegiac, but not ruminative. It is emotionally courageous, but not showy or self-indulgent.

Messick hits the ground running in the opening and titular poem, probing the myths by which our lives are so often arranged from childhood onward: “Am I not a maiden fair? / Where is my magic ring, my unicorn, / my satin gown? The beast with three wishes / has not appeared. Nor any prince”(“Feral Princess”).

Later, we see that the myths that structure and give meaning to our experiences often serve to distract from that history that, meanwhile, lies in wait all around us.

“Rite of Passage” features a young woman on her 15th birthday: “ . . .La Quinceanéra / promenades, flashing her glance,” ready to have her picture taken. But unlike the young woman, the speaker is aware of the history of the tree by which La Quinceanéra stands:

…what the trunk hides: the historical sign

that describes the murders of black men

hanged from the tree where she now stands,

smiling for her portrait in the scarred shade

of a southern city park on a hot afternoon.

The goal here is not to preach, not even to remind, but to unveil the many layers of history and tragedy that inform our experiences, often without our knowledge. Accordingly, coming of age is a process of a coming to terms with history.

Messick creates a vision of time and mortality that calls us to attention and delivers to us a view of history that is much more three-dimensional and present than we are often willing to accept.

As much as narrative provides structure for the collection, the musicality in many of the poems serves to keep the collection aloft and connected to a symphonic force less rigid than the parameters of story. “Late Year Interior,” begins “Another November counts my age. The house sighs / with heated air and the soon sadness of holidays.”

While narrative propels the collection forward, the use here of alliteration, assonance, internal and slant rhyme impart the rhythm of thought replete with an atmosphere of playfulness, evoking childhood in a manner that recalls the mellifluous effects achieved by William Blake in his Songs of Innocence and Experience.

While the musicality of her lines deliver levity, she is fully capable of bringing this sensibility to bare on difficult, painful subjects; in “Conservation Cemetery,” for instance, our speaker searching for a gravesite, describes “…the stardust and grit of you / left beneath the sparkleberry tree, / / the find-a-grave app useless as memory…”

And in “Diamond’s Not the Hardest Thing,” the poem concludes “. . . give me my diamond jubilee / / and stardust save / a last galactic dance / for this rough effigy.”

Not every poet can utilize end-rhyme so effectively, but Messick employs it in a way that emphasizes expression, saying with music what cannot be said in words alone.

Lastly, it should be noted that Messick is not writing poems that are meant merely to entertain, though there is deep pleasure here. Messick sets for herself the goal of not only taking the reader on a journey, but creating feelings in the reader that are palpable, undeniable.

Take “Coronary,” for instance, a poem that depicts the near death of the speaker’s son in the middle of a basketball game, when “for close to a minute / on the fatal clock / his blocked heart stopped.” As a reader, my heart rate sped up during this poem that, when finished, left me wanting to find my son just to give him a hug and to rejoice in the simple fact of his breathing.

Employing a combination of narrative, musicality, and haunting imagery, Messick has delivered a masterful and evocative volume of which any poet should be proud. Much like the wished-for presence in “Let Me Be Met” Messick becomes over the course of this collection, “a kind escort, someone in light, a beckoning . . . ."

That this is her first volume is simply remarkable and bodes well for the poems that will surely follow this outstanding debut.

If you go

What: Reading by Marda Messick from "Feral Princess" (Apalachee Press, 2024. $15)

When : 4-6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7

Where: Midtown Reader, 1123 Thomasville Road

Additional appearances: My Favorite Books, 1-3 p.m., Sept. 21; 8 p.m. Sept. 25, The Bark, Sept. 25; 5-7 First Friday, The Bookshelf, Thomasville, Georgia

Jimmy Kimbrell is head of Creative Writing at Florida State University and a faculty poet.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: A Tallahassee poet looks at mortality in bold, musical 'Feral Princess'