In their third collection, Your Dazzling Death, Cass Donish (The Year of the Femme) grieves their partner, the poet Kelly Caldwell, and celebrates their love and life together—the good and the bad. These poems are raw and reaching, often addressed directly to Caldwell. They pulse with ongoing loss, as memory by memory, day by day, Donish is confronted with the fact of their beloved’s death, and their continuing love for her.
Several poems begin with the line, “In my next life,” acknowledging how grief reforges the world of those left behind. Donish seems to reach for that remade world not only by looking back into the painful, tender memories of a shared queer life, but also by insisting on Caldwell’s continued relevance and presence. “I don’t know // if it’s then or now / anymore. If you’re here / or already gone” they write in “Agate Beach, Lopez Island.”
The centerpiece of the collection, “Kelly in Violet” is a palimpsest of The History of Violets by Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio; some traces of the source text remain in gray. This piece is rich in imagery, overflowing with the daily challenge of living, particularly with grief and mental illness. The urgency and directness of loss haunts even the most beautiful lines: “The butterflies want you back, the hawks want you back, the moon is pining.”
Donish rejects simple notions of time and loss, and instead writes into queer time and grief time, heavy with ghosts and rich with possibility. “Yet isn’t it a mistake / to say I know our story now? Isn’t that the thing? // I don’t believe in dying / fixing—stilling—anything.” This is an openhearted and devastating collection—proof that love stories do not end, but rather go on changing, even through death.
