A Tender, Provocative Interweaving of Earthly and Divine

Review: Eros Rex, poems by Haley Hodges, Orison Books.

Brimming over with desire, Haley Hodges’ collection Eros Rex reverberates ‘like the plucked string of a lute’ (‘Innocence’) with stark, sensuous questions about Christliness and control.

Hodges’ poems insist upon the reader’s attention in much the same way as the poetic voice demands attention from those who spark her desire, insisting upon an external authority to which power can be ceded. The headiness of many of Hodges’ poems stems from her depiction of the power within the giving up of power; the paradox of maintaining control by choosing to yield control. Again and again, the poetic voice issues commands – to religious authorities (‘Come climax / Christ, come Eros Rex’ in ‘Eros Rex’), to figures of amorous interplay (‘Make me your illumined cave / of wonders. Make me your clever girl’ in ‘Sapiosexual’) and perhaps to the reader, to the self, or both at once (‘Just try’ in ‘Maybe welcome it’). ‘Give me / the collar. Give me the crown,’ the voice commands in ‘Two Takes’, one of many images in which the wielding of control through the issuing of instructions is couched behind a veneer of subservience. And among the many imperative commands given to others, there are just as many expressions of internal desire, from the physical to the metaphysical. Perhaps the most evocative of these is found amidst the snow-covered world depicted in ‘Blizzard’, in which the poetic voice wishes for ‘snow Jesus / not acid Jesus’. As with many of Hodges’ most arresting phrases, the complexity of meaning brought forth despite the simplicity of the immediate image hits the reader as sharply as ‘Corrosive Christ’ (‘Blizzard’) eating away sin.

There is an enjoyable purposefulness to the rather jarring juxtaposition of earthly and divine woven throughout the collection. The reader is immediately made aware that we will be oscillating between the grand and the everyday, the lofty and the mundane, through the contrast between the first and seconds poems. After the titular poem’s delicious portrayal of all-encompassing desire, extending beyond the mental and the physical to the realm of the spiritual (‘spasm / of the panting soul’), over the page we find ourselves among ‘plastic mustard packets’ and ‘five-/dollar duo deals’ – we have transitioned from the realm of Eros Rex to that of a different monarch, found much closer to home (‘Burger King’). This is one example of many in which Hodges seizes the control her poetic voice so clearly enjoys offering to others through her ability to keep her reader guessing, wielding her wit and unreserved boldness to great effect.

Eros Rex oscillates between self-assured yielding in the name of pleasure and vulnerable exposure of the uncertainties of a soul adrift in a dark, unrecognisable ocean. While the likes of ‘Sapiosexual, ‘Master, Master’, ‘What was the best you ever had?’ and ‘Between the jaws’ confidently offer up a knowing eroticism with a certain glint in the eye, these are counter-balanced by the quiet stillness of ‘Heart Talks’, ‘Drifting’, and ‘What is memory, if not testament?’, each of which delivers its own sucker-punch ending. Of course, the sensual and the poignant are not divorced from one other – even amidst the eroticised religious imagery of ‘Master, Master’, there is a sudden heartfelt sincerity as the voice proclaims, ‘my love of you has been / the death of artifice’. Nevertheless, it is when the voice is not engaging in erotically charged power plays, but instead turns its focus inwards, that the single-minded confidence, unapologetic demands, and fiery sharpness of the more carnal poems are eroded like sea-glass. What remains is fragile, tender, and achingly poignant. When the satisfying and pleasurable sense of self-certainty is stripped away, we are left looking inwards with a quiet contemplation of isolation, purpose, and need.

Many questions are put forward over the course of the collection, some more explicitly than others.

Implicitly, the collection asks: Who are we when we are left alone?

And explicitly: What is memory if not testament?

Whether any reader believes that the answers can be found within these pages or not, we will surely find ourselves with much to contemplate in seeking them, buoyed by the ample richness of imagery and sound that makes up Eros Rex.