WHAT MONSTERS YOU MAKE OF THEM

In Teresi’s collection, he examines inequities, hierarchies, and history.

In the opening poem, “Reading Osip Mandelstam in Zion National Park,” Teresi notes that the park’s very name comes from “the decisions of bureaucrats / And missionaries who ignored and redacted the indigenous words / Renamed this place after the Jerusalem fortress David conquered.” He quickly moves from the lasting effects of colonialism to the park’s unique beauty: “The quaint vulgarity of human architecture has no blueprint for this.” The tension between humankind and the natural world continues throughout, with Teresi frequently observing how humans have treated one another across time. He uses a few recurring structures, so indicated by their titles: for example, the “reading” series features the narrator studying the work of historical figures while visiting national parks. In “Reading Osip Mandelstam in Zion National Park,” Teresi adeptly juxtaposes the Zion National Park’s open landscape with the “windowless rooms” that held Mandelstam, a poet who was exiled and then imprisoned by Stalin’s regime. The collection also includes a series of conversation poems between two asynchronous figures. The boxer Mike Tyson explains aging and the perils of fame to the Romantic poet John Keats, “Most men must take a few punches / To win, but not you and me, John,” and Mayan gods pity Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and his court decisions. Other poems use the same phrases but ordered in two different columns and grapple with humanitarian issues, like the deaths of refugee migrants or the whitewashing of history. These stylistic choices work well, grabbing the reader’s attention and underscoring the overarching theme of interrogation.

How people justify their decisions permeates the book. Teresi writes, “We think it mercy to forge one narrative / By removing another.” The “we” collectively implicates humanity in a long timeline of atrocities. Often, the justifications or motivations Teresi presents trace back to the divine and the ways various religions have used gods—Christian, Greek, or pre-Columbian—to serve personal interests. Here, a self-serving religious figure faces the consequences of his actions: A minister preaching about the Tree of Knowledge is later killed by a tree in a car accident. Teresi also grapples with how new generations are unaffected by prior wrongs. In “We Call it Wisdom,” a poem about teaching students about war’s effects, children react with laughter. Teresi’s work has the frankness of someone who, as one of his speakers believes, “suspects nothing natural holds / On to vulnerability with nostalgia.” The author also employs imagery of damaged flora, fauna, and landscapes to explore how developed nations have collectively ravaged the planet. These verses allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the costs of human progress and even consider what no longer exists: “The ground is woven with the diaphanous swelling of where a birch once was…it is there, even after the ax, even after the hollering rot of a stump.” Overall, Teresi’s collection offers a cleareyed, inventive take on the effects of power.

A cogent, skeptical collection that examines those whose stories are erased or preserved.