Review of Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee by Hanna Pachman
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With resplendent confidence, Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee flies the reader through a job application. Spiritual, humorous, and tender, the book demonstrates the pros and cons of living without limits. Even before the poetry begins, the book shows the humor that comes with always reaching for more experience. In the table of contents, the subcategory, How Do You Take Responsibility for Your Role in Mistakes and Conflicts? is followed by the poem, “When We fuck Up, Which Is Often.”
In interviews, Studdard has named that her influences include Anne Sexton, Dianne Seuss, and Pablo Neruda. Like them, she implies that the sensual isn’t that far removed from the holy. The poem, “At Fifty, I Became a Three-Time Finalist for the Darwin Awards” brings greater attention to life by acknowledging death.
Crashed my car into myself and climbed out of both
into my other flame, to burn, a genius of not leaving.
The freeway said there’s a hole in time’s pocket, a weather
system, drunk gamblers who won’t stay put at the casino,
and I said take me to the glass hour, the sliver and sleet.
Take me. My wings were born in a miniature coffin.
They found their song in my broken throat,
at the bottom of an empty smile.
Some of the long inventive titles highlight the hilarity of unapologetic fervor: “Huge Like King Kong, Like Godzilla, Like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput,” “Sometimes My Body Forgets It’s Not a Peacock,” and “You Say Cognitive Dissonance, I say I Lost My Basket Full of Light.” Studdard challenges the notion that women could be “too much,” by saying “too much” first.
In the poem, “Huge Like King Kong, Like Godzilla, Like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput,” Studdard turns the sky into an accessory, “I will pull down the sky and give it to you as a scarf.” This hunger to connect with the beyond has shown up in one of Melissa Studdard’s prior collections, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (“I brewed some tea and closed my eyes / while I ate the sun, the air, the rain, / photosynthesis on a plate”). God, birds, and the sky take precedence. Although similar themes flow throughout both books, Dear Selection Committee takes a clearer direction, dancing within the world of a job applicant.
The plight of moving ahead involves owning failure. The poem, “My Boyfriend’s Body’s Covered in Newspaper” suggests that passion trumps the possibility of letting mistakes prevent you from trying.
What surprises me
about the body is resilience. Mine
has been a shot glass, a punching
bag, a cigarette filter, a lie
detector, a crash test dummy.
Oh, how it opens and opens anyway
when passion comes near.
The collection is playfully self-aware and further grounds itself by showing how wanting more can make it difficult to see the meaning behind the role you are after. “The Continent Expanding in You” imagines loving everyone; it takes away from having an ability to distinguish anything about anyone.
Sadness, lust, and awe
walk into a bar. One
reaches for the ashtray. One orders a gin.
One falls in love with the streetlamp’s
reflection in the window.
The underworld is the overworld,
and the overworld is the inbetweenworld,
and the inbetweenworld
is also the alsoworld.
It’s all so much.
You should be careful
when you pray for abundance.
Humans are blinded by how much they want to be seen by others. The poems vacillate between a longing for approval and an acceptance for what is present. Failure is inevitable in a lifestyle of applying to have the best position, but humor, spirituality and perseverance make the process easier to navigate. The collection ends quietly, with an offering, “Listen, / it’s just us here now. Give me your hand.” Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee offers the reader a way out, by acknowledging that they are not alone. At the precipice there is a current of sound, but within this is a movement that creates connection and pushes us to take action.
Dear Selection Committee is available from Jack Leg Press.
In interviews, Studdard has named that her influences include Anne Sexton, Dianne Seuss, and Pablo Neruda. Like them, she implies that the sensual isn’t that far removed from the holy. The poem, “At Fifty, I Became a Three-Time Finalist for the Darwin Awards” brings greater attention to life by acknowledging death.
Crashed my car into myself and climbed out of both
into my other flame, to burn, a genius of not leaving.
The freeway said there’s a hole in time’s pocket, a weather
system, drunk gamblers who won’t stay put at the casino,
and I said take me to the glass hour, the sliver and sleet.
Take me. My wings were born in a miniature coffin.
They found their song in my broken throat,
at the bottom of an empty smile.
Some of the long inventive titles highlight the hilarity of unapologetic fervor: “Huge Like King Kong, Like Godzilla, Like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput,” “Sometimes My Body Forgets It’s Not a Peacock,” and “You Say Cognitive Dissonance, I say I Lost My Basket Full of Light.” Studdard challenges the notion that women could be “too much,” by saying “too much” first.
In the poem, “Huge Like King Kong, Like Godzilla, Like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput,” Studdard turns the sky into an accessory, “I will pull down the sky and give it to you as a scarf.” This hunger to connect with the beyond has shown up in one of Melissa Studdard’s prior collections, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (“I brewed some tea and closed my eyes / while I ate the sun, the air, the rain, / photosynthesis on a plate”). God, birds, and the sky take precedence. Although similar themes flow throughout both books, Dear Selection Committee takes a clearer direction, dancing within the world of a job applicant.
The plight of moving ahead involves owning failure. The poem, “My Boyfriend’s Body’s Covered in Newspaper” suggests that passion trumps the possibility of letting mistakes prevent you from trying.
What surprises me
about the body is resilience. Mine
has been a shot glass, a punching
bag, a cigarette filter, a lie
detector, a crash test dummy.
Oh, how it opens and opens anyway
when passion comes near.
The collection is playfully self-aware and further grounds itself by showing how wanting more can make it difficult to see the meaning behind the role you are after. “The Continent Expanding in You” imagines loving everyone; it takes away from having an ability to distinguish anything about anyone.
Sadness, lust, and awe
walk into a bar. One
reaches for the ashtray. One orders a gin.
One falls in love with the streetlamp’s
reflection in the window.
The underworld is the overworld,
and the overworld is the inbetweenworld,
and the inbetweenworld
is also the alsoworld.
It’s all so much.
You should be careful
when you pray for abundance.
Humans are blinded by how much they want to be seen by others. The poems vacillate between a longing for approval and an acceptance for what is present. Failure is inevitable in a lifestyle of applying to have the best position, but humor, spirituality and perseverance make the process easier to navigate. The collection ends quietly, with an offering, “Listen, / it’s just us here now. Give me your hand.” Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee offers the reader a way out, by acknowledging that they are not alone. At the precipice there is a current of sound, but within this is a movement that creates connection and pushes us to take action.
Dear Selection Committee is available from Jack Leg Press.
Hanna Pachman is a poet, whose work is forthcoming in or has been published by Rattle, The MacGuffin, What Rough Beast, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. Originally from Connecticut, she currently hosts and curates a monthly poetry event, "Beatnik Cafe" in Los Angeles which has been running since 2018. Hanna was an Assistant Editor for the poetry magazine, Gyroscope Review for two years.
