Briefly, Gently: Record of an Unreadied Boat, by Tori Rego

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Briefly, Gently is the debut poetry collection of prose writer turned poet, Tori Rego. Following in the tradition of writers such as Louise Glück and Anne Carson, her poetry combines autobiographical writing with mythic storytelling. Like Anais Nin, her words seek to elevate the erotic life to profound intellectual pursuit, while retaining all the intensity and immediacy of lived experience.

The poems in this collection chart love’s alchemical transformations: love as it bursts, pours, freezes, melts, and flows again. They invite the reader to immerse in these shifts as a swimmer riding the ocean’s waves. More than a book of love poems, this collection chronicles the journey of losing oneself in love, only to find oneself again, irrevocably yet marvelously changed.

Briefly, Gently traverses balmy Mediterranean towns, train stations, airports, deserts, deep water, and the geography created by crinkled bedsheets. Intimacy is punctuated by a series of arrivals and departures which unfold new revelations. “I wanted to write you a letter / but how would it reach / across so many miles / so many doubts ” the narrator asks in “night swim,” the collection’s opening poem. A yearning to cross seemingly impassable distances animates these sensual, obsessive, water logged pages.

As the collection progresses, the narrator counts pleasure and pain, barters with her imaginary God, conjures sea monsters, gorges on sweets, and feels her way through foreign landscapes. Like a message in a bottle, this collection is written to an unknown recipient, trusting fate to deliver it to souls lost at sea. Each poem is its own flotsam treasure, begging to be uncorked and discovered.

Tori Rego is a writer from Charleston, South Carolina. She is currently based in Chicago, where she hosts the monthly reading series Written on a Napkin. Her work flirts with fairy tale and searches for the erotic in the cerebral. For a full list of her publications and projects, visit her website at www.torirego.com.