MELANCHOLIA
Wanda’s second collection for VA stares down the crossroads of depression, family, treatment, and recovery, unapologetically refusing answers to the questions which lack them. These poems shirk clichés of self-discovery by revealing strength through their vulnerability.
"we’re all learning to be sad and alive at the same time. to pull the hurting thing from our chests without making everybody uncomfortable."
Released May 11, 2021 from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press
Advanced Reviews
"Wanda Deglane’s Melancholia is, to borrow a line of the poet’s, “ghostly and blooming.” Deglane renders the unspeakable moments of mental illness and family fractures into language so cutting and precise it will break your heart open. Let it. Come into this wondrous and haunting collection to find poems that bring the invisible to the surface, that blend nightmare and dreamscape, and that trace family longing and belongings and states of being into wonderment and wandering. Across safety pins, half-finished Mountain Dew, and antidepressants waiting at the pharmacy, this collection weaves a tapestry of what goes unspoken in mental illness while questioning a society that asks us, the mentally ill, not to be too loud, lest we disturb the peace we ourselves are not allowed. These poems shout back, even when they whisper. Deglane asks us to “imagine the kind of desperation it must have taken to start / lighting everything around you on fire and hope it somehow saves you.” In doing so, we imagine this book: poems set on fire to stay alive and wow, what beauty we can gather from such light!”
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-Carla Sofia Ferreira, poet and teacher, author of Ironbound Fados (Ghost City Press, 2019)
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“With Melancholia, Wanda Deglane strikingly and devastatingly collapses reality into a world punctuated by prescribed chemicals and ghosts that are not quite there. There is a compelling density to the knotty mass of Melancholia and as its matter assiduously becomes dislodged, its heaviness leaps from the book and despite all odds, floats above the reader as a haunting. There is much pleasure to be gleaned in how the poems seem to be subtle slanting rhymes for each other. This collection exquisitely wraps itself around unraveling and spiraling familial ties while staring clear-eyed at the resulting residual complex repercussions.”
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-Bryon Cherry, author of Funeral Journey (Quail)
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"Both grounded and ethereal, this collection is equal parts dreamy and real. Wanda’s poems feel intimate, like secrets being uttered to lovers, like activated photographs from a long-lost family album, like pill-kissed segments of pain, wisdom and observations. She gives commentary on mental health and our health care system in ways that are poignant and visceral; they will strike you right at your core."
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-Gina Tron, author of Suspect (Tarpaulin Sky)
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"Wanda Deglane’s Melancholia is an ethereal eulogy to innocence detailed with emergency crayon candles, starfish in the sky for rocky road souls with marshmallows on fire who rely on texts from the pharmacist and 'the discreet paper bags' that, like Deglane’s poetry, make 'living just a little more bearable.'"
-Kristin Garth, author of Girlarium and other books
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"Wanda Deglane's "Melancholia", reminiscent of Wurtzel and Hornbacher, is a study in the heavy obligation of existence and the Sisyphean effort of surviving. This is an extremely poignant collection, full of prescriptions and blood ties, clutched steering wheels and the catharsis of screaming. It is an excellent and relatable read."
-Kolleen Carney Hoepfner, EIC of Drunk Monkeys, Author of Your Hand has Fixed the Firmament and A Live Thing, Clinging with Many Teeth
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