A Review of Terri Muuss' Book 'Godspine'
By Stephanie Valente
godspine (forthcoming, 3:A Taos Press) by Terri Muuss charters the complex urgency and stark layers of memory, vulnerability, and power. With meditations on the intrinsic power on sexuality and sex and their reclamation, alongside survival and its waves of experience, Muuss explores the meaning and fluid experience of it all.
Trauma and its residue comes in all forms: bangs, sparks, crashes, whispers, and side-ways glances. Muuss takes these pieces and broken gems, illustrating the weight these moments carry. In Affadavit: "She pushed me down./I held her to my chest filled with birds. She/left." The poet spectacularly highlights impactful slivers of time, emphasizing a illustrious fullness and simultaneous emptiness. Even more poignant, and yet surreal, Not An I explores: "A walk-in closet/of bones, my tongue fitted to the lock." Muuss uses ordinary actions and objects to further spotlight the transgressions inflicted by trauma, and how, if, or when the speaker copes.
The spirit of survival and coping continues, it evolves in the poem "Grief is as silent": "...I inherit a land/without memory/where the tide leaves." As we stand on the shores of grief, body trauma, and the self, Muuss examines how we as humans moving through these experiences arrives, Muuss further questions how we stand in the moment and beyond.
This essence is not lost as Muuss traverses through the deep. Sex and sexuality moves with these nuances. "Spotting" serves as a transition point, with wandering, and using feminine power: " My mind wanders the long/corridor—Lady Macbeth scrubbing at memory." Words become more brazen in "The Holy, Ghosted": " Whips are more/devious without flourish." Muuss is declarative, powerful, and lush. Words are proclamations. Words are transformative in the multiple faces of trauma.
The poet is purposeful and unapologetic, this is an incantation for reclaiming the body and its sexual identity. "Charting the Course for More" reveals: "I am so slick—oh—/your hot angels measure/my scent." The stunning rawness is breathtaking. Muss spares no moment to savor this spirit, especially in the title work: "Morning will come with its terrible/teeth, our outline/traced in sweat." godspine reveals the spirit, the journey, and the wildness inside all of us that cuts its teeth on healing.
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works as an editor. One day, she would like to be a silent film star. She is the author of Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and Waiting for the End of the World (Bottlecap Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in dotdotdash, Nano Fiction, LIES/ISLE, and Uphook Press. She can be found at her website.
