Former Bellingham Review contributor Andrea Hollander’s newest collection of poetry, And Now, Nowhere But Here (Terrapin Books, 2023), is a stunning display of wisdom, intimacy, and heart. The author invites us to sit with moments of grief and distinctive experiences of longing, allowing the reader the opportunity to feel everything at full capacity. With poems exploring past relationships, moments of coming-of-age, and nature, Hollander demonstrates her ability to capture and illuminate meaningful moments of everyday life.
Hollander starts this collection by dedicating it to the memory of her brother, Gordon, who we learn in later poems died following a cancer diagnosis. The author writes about her brother in abrupt stunning detail, often ruminating on their childhood as seen in “Star”: “This / is the first time he’s ruined something he loves'' and in “The Moment I Knew”: “The poem was, I admit, / subtle: the poet never states outright that his brother / is now dead. Only that together they defined / the poet’s childhood.” These lines are not only devastating but also underscore a key source of vulnerability in the collection’s work. Hollander’s relationship with grief is new but not unfamiliar. The finality of death is not the focus of these poems but rather the finality of life. Hollander zooms in on moments of memory where her brother was brimming with existence, an existence that still lingers long after his passing, much like love persevering through the darkest moments of grief.
In this book, Hollander approaches nature writing with sublime grandeur, hypnotizing the reader with description and metaphor. In “Sunday Afternoon 99 degrees,” Hollander writes about Portland, Oregon similar to the way one might write about a lover, her intentions delicate and focus unwavering: “All this laughter, this mingling, / all these bicycles lying on their sides / in the grass as if in friendship–this, / I think, is joy.” The warmth Hollander conjures in her descriptions of a city park bumbling with life are poignant, providing the reader a moment to themselves to stretch their muscles under the warm Oregon weather. In “Tom McCall Waterfront Park,” Hollander describes a picnic she took with her adult son, intermixing knowledge of their relationship with visual cues to the nature all around them, ending the final stanza with “We raise our plastic wine glasses to spring, / to the cherry blossoms, to this park, and to being here / together, not despite, but because of, what came before.” New beginnings, like the cherry blossoms, endure so they can eventually bloom.
Throughout And Now, Nowhere But Here, Hollander appears to be mourning past relationships but also her past self. Much like real life, some poems are fuzzy when describing moments of memory, the writer unable to sharpen the edges of specific details. In “One After Another,” the speaker reminisces about a past lover but is unable to determine who ended the relationship: “Last week a man I loved fifty years ago / wrote to me, then phoned. I don’t remember / why I left him. Or did he leave me?” The lack of recall here is haunting but also hopeful, showing the reader that the relationship’s end is not what floods the memory but rather the love they felt towards one another.
And Now, Nowhere But Here pulsates with sincerity. Hollander’s poetry grapples with transformation of the self, each poem overflowing with meaning with every reread, commemorating the power of connecting with ourselves both in the past and the present. Hollander writes: “ If nothing bad happens, be happy. / If something does, well, at least / you know what to do,” and reminds us we can get through anything because we already have.
Katie Strubel (she/her) recently received her MFA from Western Washington University where she studied fiction writing and taught English composition. Her work has been featured in publications like Bullshit Lit, Archetype Literary, FEED, Warning Lines, and others. She is the Co-Poetry Editor of Bellingham Review.
