A Review of Songs for the Land-Bound by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Published on September 24, 2024 by June Road Press.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started Songs for the Land-Bound, but I certainly didn’t anticipate connecting so deeply to this poetry collection. In her debut, Violeta Garcia-Mendoza constructs a portrait of life the way she experiences it. In this collection, she explores the ambivalence of joy and anxiety through nature, family, and all modern life has to offer.

Through many of the poems, we discover what family means to Garcia-Mendoza, along with the many definitions of family she juggles. The past and present occasionally blur as the poet reflects on her own parents and childhood while considering her current situation as a parent. One poem, titled “A Dozen New Collective Nouns for Fathers,” expands on this theme in a wonderful and thought-evoking way by giving fathers names such as “a stable a stumble a stubble/an ambition.”

Although I am not a mother like Garcia-Mendoza, I see myself in poems that touch on being a woman poet with responsibilities. Yes, I want to say to her poems, I get it. I’ve been there. Many a day, I have found myself in front of the sink, elbow-deep in dishes, wondering if I’ll ever amount to anything, as in “Instructions for the At-Home Poet.” I’ve been the one shutting doors around the house when expecting visitors, because, really, I’m not about to put effort into cleaning the laundry room to be conceived as presentable, as Garcia-Mendoza phrases more skillfully in “Housekeeping Secrets.” “In the past sixty minutes,” Garcia-Mendoza writes, “the mother-poet/has not written a dozen lines.” Yes. Yes, to writing about the self-doubt and monotonous chores that otherwise might be brushed off or even looked down upon. Invisible burdens like these are not always taken seriously or discussed so to read great poetry that reveal and revel in these moments feels validating.

Nature is another important theme in this collection. It is intricately interlaced with other topics and subjects, and appears, in some way, in nearly every poem. Even in a poem about type 1 diabetes, nature is weaved in beautifully: “Let the pancreas’s beta cells pinecone//and crumble. Chronic the clouds. Let the blood/sugar fluctuate a flock of blackbirds.” As a suburban wildlife photographer and someone who finds comfort and awe in the natural world, Garcia-Mendoza pays close attention to flora and fauna in her work. She also gives a lot of respect to the animals she writes about. In “Frog Song,” which she dedicates to the resilience of frogs, she writes “Never mind the mud, the pondweed;/don’t apologize. Propel yourself/mouth-first into your appetites—//your every move a swish, your every cell a song swell.”

In a very human way, Garcia-Mendoza is anxious in this collection. Anxious about not being enough of a poet, mother, or wife, about the unstoppable rush of time, and that unexplained, hanging dread, among everything else there is to worry about. When she puts the baby to bed, “instead of sleeping:/set up a Google alert for how to survive a flood/and let your phone mislead you all the way/to Venice, acqua alta and a headline you misread/as A Survivor’s Guide.”  But the poems do not steep in the anxiety or ignore it. Instead, there is a natural push and pull between the anxiety that comes with living, and the undeniable joy of it. As she writes, “you can’t resist/a little still life lit with grief & wonder.” Garcia-Mendoza manages to achieve an imperfect and human balance between the two without falling into one or the other.

I also loved the honesty of modern-day living in Songs for the Land-Bound. The poem, “Lockdown Minecraft” about Garcia-Mendoza son’s Minecraft village is an excellent example of this. The poem reveals a truth about the small, everyday things we do without thinking. “My son builds himself a fortress, hunkers down, forgets/the days. He asks: How strong is concrete versus clay?/What we all want to know: what barriers will keep us safe.”  Her choice to confront these modern phenomena is something admirable. It feels important because poetry is meant to refashion the way we see the world, yet we don’t often find the larger digital world we interact with represented in poetry.

The use of images in Garcia-Mendoza’s poetry is something else I keep coming back to. Many of her poems host surprising, beautiful visuals that I want to shut my eyes and imagine when I stumble upon them. Who wouldn’t linger when told about a “ghost stitch sewn/illuminant over the scar,” or take a moment to fully believe “the body is a mansion meant for pacing,” or want to listen to the “dose/of ocean moving through these woods.” Her clever use of language and construction of imagery will encourage you to listen attentively, because you don’t want to miss any of it.

Though the collection is divided into six sections, with each portion focusing on a few different subjects or themes, it does not feel at all divided. The poems work cohesively together, and the major themes and ideas of the collection carry from beginning to end. Keeping this in mind, it’s worth noting the first section doesn’t stand out as much as the others. Although it functions well as an introduction, the wandering of the poems isn’t quite as effective since there isn’t any immediate connection between the individual poems. Once we move on from the section, that feeling fades away. Since the other sections allow us to learn more about who the poet is and what her life feels like with added context to some of the recurring themes and narratives, this understanding deepens as we read on. Garcia-Mendoza’s Songs for the Land-Bound was a treat to read. It covers a wide lens of subjects and themes but manages to feel concise and deliberate in the stories it tells. Nature, family, and modern life, and the anxiety and joy they stir up, take the main stage in this collection, but subtler themes complicate and broaden the reach of the poems. This is an incredible debut that poetry-lovers should be on the lookout for.