Review: "Landlocked" by Julia McConnell

Landlocked by Julia McConnell
Published July 2023 via Wheelbarrow Books
★★★★

Take us with you say the boots
lined up against the bedroom wall.
Take us through your red dirt path
spring puddles, yellowed grass,
dog shit, it doesn't matter. (46*)

This is a love letter and a breakup letter, both written to Oklahoma. Oklahoma, where the land is harsh and the love is fierce and for McConnell it will always be home—but where, perhaps, she cannot stay and cannot truly return.

I read these poems spread out over a couple of weeks, because, whatever else, they're clearly not here to all be gobbled down in one go. With nods to Elizabeth Bishop, Audre Lord, and other standouts of the genre, it's impossible to read these as anything other than smart, as poems written not just by someone who knows how to wrangle language but someone who has done a great deal of thinking about time and place and news and history, Fernweh and Heimweh and home.

I'm reminded a little of Prairie Silence, though that's likely more context than style. But I love the imagery here, the reverence and irreverence applied to this place I've never been but McConnell feels such close ties to.

If this is the end let them not say
I should have wandered
so far from home
to spend the end like this
untethered in a city searching
for colored lights and a little joy.

If this is the end the pictures came out blurry. (71)

*Quotations are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.