Movements, by Theodore Heil

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Theodore Heil reconstructs experience in his debut chapbook Movements. Borrowing stories, memories, facts, and action, he constructs a narrative of his family and his journey from and to a markedly Catholic spirituality.

His titular movements are inspired greatly by orchestral arrangements. These arrangements place emphasis on the role of sound in poetry. Particularly, how the sonic quality of a poem is capable of holding together fragments of the past much like the body itself carries remembrances of trauma. These poems utilize sound and image to probe at the capability of living through a rupture and returning to one’s belief system with new eyes.

The final movement focuses on turning towards the contraventional and sublime, away from the family unit which has led the body towards its troubles. The collection itself ends on uneven ground, its vagueness questioning what it materially looks like to be humanistic, bearing in its heart the radicality of a seemingly-senseless hope.

Theodore Heil is a writer living in New York City. You can find him online on Instagram @theodore.heil or twitter @barthesluvr.