Stepmotherland

Starred review from February 21, 2022
Holnes’s ecstatic debut transforms an immigrant’s dislocation into a newly discovered sense of belonging. Crossing borders and languages, these poems speak a truth about identity that’s more complex than mere labels can capture. His joyful prosody comes through in such lines as, “our moreno swing-hips, dips, and spins to the two-beat/ carimbó drum rhythm stronger than the pulse/ thumping through my little boy body/ until I can’t tell the difference/ between my corazón and the radio’s ton-ton.” The collection moves from the speaker’s youth in Panama to a reimagined self and his relationship to America as he comes into adulthood. Poems question an authorized “African American” version of Blackness: “Now I like that boom boom pow, chickens jackin my style/ Now can I get a hey? Can I get a yo?/ You can get with this or—wait—is that how it goes?” Other poems celebrate the vulnerability of transformation: “A king,/ I queen so hard my earth-quaking rule/ breaks the laws of nature; flesh-colored spanx and/ control-top leggings tuck it away/ where the sun don’t shine.” This impressive work dazzles with songs for a shared humanity.

Starred review from January 1, 2022
Poet and playwright Holnes lights the page on fire with blazing lyrics in this crackling debut collection of poetry. Drawing on African, American, Panamanian, and Choc� heritages, Holnes illuminates the intersections between race, language, class, gender, and sex to create moving, multivalent poems that can be pithy and direct ("I don't want to be whiter, just free"), but also brazenly breathtaking: "I don't believe in this nation // but can in your naked grace. Come / make me a man / of faith." Holnes infuses the political with deeply personal insights by playing with dialogue and stage directions ("EXTERIOR: U.S. INVASION OF PANAM� 1989"), as well as a series of invented definitions, which includes entries for "baby" ("This woman's need for the family lost to the guerrilleros / This man's efforts to be her village") and "African-Americanize" ("To trade in Puma cleats for Air Jordans / To refer to futbol as soccer"). Holnes likewise paints vivid images, whether through strikingly original depictions, like that of the speaker's hands transforming ("I was sad to see them suddenly turn into wings, / plumed palms, hollow finger bones, / limp wrists") or via ekphrastic poems that invoke such Black artists as Michael Paul Britto, Kehinde Wiley, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A incandescent volume by a promising poet.

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