Unbecoming By Suzette Bishop

 

Unbecoming By Suzette Bishop Published by Ethel, 2026

Reviewed by Sarah Stern

In Suzette Bishop’s Unbecoming, the reader is reminded of this: “how thin the border is between health/ and illness.” In her profoundly moving and deeply felt chapbook, Bishop makes art from her life with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS).

By braiding her own experiences of the disease, the often-negligent medical research and treatment options, and the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, Bishop gives us poems that ponder the body and what it can and can’t do in the midst of what she calls “slowsand.” There is rage here, but hope to. “Sleeping Beauty dreams of swinging in a hammock.”

The placement of text and sharp line breaks heighten the limitations imposed by ME/CFS, activities that so many take for granted. As in the section titled Phase 2.

No baking No driving on highways, No pacing while lecturing, No walking at the park, No cleaning No cooking, No one over,

Physical

Disruptions

Bleed.

If only you could see energy flowing down the couch where I’m stuck or bent at the kitchen counter, leaning against the wall. If I drew, I’d draw that invisible energy

waterfalling out of ME. Identities are called into question, chronic sorrow, more loss of material possessions:

I can’t ride a bike, so it’s gone,

my horseback-riding gear hung by the door, unused but still smells of horse,

clothes that are too small, too young, too constricting, donated or sold,

books I’ll never get to that stay on the shelves; I can’t part with them.

The physical space on the page between the last four lines of the quoted text mirrors the losses of the poet. As readers, that white space allows us to feel it too.

Unbecoming should be required reading for not only the poetry community but for those in the medical industrial complex. Here is a testament to what it is to suffer, to be misunderstood, to be questioned even by those who are near and dear and can’t understand what is happening.

“the evil fairy appeared in the door,/ disappeared through the door./ The End: life as they knew it (or imagined it).”

This is a brave collection and a necessary one. Read it.

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Sarah Stern is the author of Dear Letters in the Red Box, We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune, But Today Is Different, and Another Word for Love. More at www.sarahstern.me.

Forget About Sleep, Miriam Levine

Forget About Sleep, Miriam Levine, NYQ Books, The New York Quarterly Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 470, Beacon, NY 12508, 95 pages, www.nyq.org.

 Book Review by Sarah Stern

Miriam Levine's sixth book of poetry, Forget About Sleep, is a beautiful meditation on what it is to live a full and deeply-felt life. Her poems reinforce her keen observations about this broken world, and yet she finds the light in unexpected places. My favorite poems, and there are many, in Forget About Sleep, show us these moments we might miss because we are too busy with things that grab our precious attention. I love Levine's celebration of sensuality—her own and the world at large—her wonder of friends and family, and her exploration of her own mortality and by extension our own. She invites us to explore and we are happy to accompany her.

In "Ben's Rendezvous," one of Levine's opening poems, the subject, "wandered from home,/ though forbidden. "I was/ seven and small for my age./ It was twilight. It was spring," setting the tone for the whole collection. This poet not only ardently observes, but almost becomes the things themselves, as by the end of this poem:

"The light above the bar was pink,/ and the people in command/ of their swaying bodies. I/ swayed too, drunk on kisses,/ my fingers caught on/ the skirt of my dress held/ by sashes tied at the back."

Levine continues to wander and take in the world not shying away from the cruelty and haphazardness of it all. As in the title poem, Forget about Sleep. "Mim, why would/ you ever want to leave the earth?"

We would not, if only for pleasure. At the end of "Diamond Head," we get it. "We bit/ and sucked. I lived in you, eely tongue. It/ kills me, your scent, a mix of salty musk and bourbon./ If we had forgotten would we have to go on and on?"

In many of the poems, like the little girl who ran from home, early on in the collection, the speaker is traveling, and with that, we get the world anew, as in "Small Hotels."

"These seaside hotels with women's names/ take the surf's roar without answering back./ The Patricia, The Barbara, the Julia:/ I'd try them in turn, one for each year, south/ for the season at last at the Julia./ The elevator would have room for only / me and one suitcase. The windows could be/ opened. There'd be no wake-up call."

Levine asks in her poems what it would be like to be humble in a world that demands we shout about ourselves all day long. In the second stanza of "You Ask Yourself,"  "You think it may be time to leave your old self,/ not like the Carmelites who take a vow of silence,/ a new name and pray day and night for the world,/ but something like them, someone who speaks less."

Winner of the 2023 Laura Boss Poetry Foundation Narrative Poetry Award, Forget About Sleep, tells a story, but it's one of many surprising threads. Fun to come across Susan Sontag and Jean Rhys in "Lighten Up." Levine addresses the self. "Go ahead, Mim, be frivolous, spend/ an hour choosing a dress." In fact, you'll spend more than an hour with Forget About Sleep, and you'll be all the richer for it.

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Sarah Stern is the author of We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune, But Today Is Different, and Another Word for Love. Recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations, Stern is also five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts' BRIO Award for Poetry. More at www.sarahstern.me.