Sarah Freligh’s We (Harbor Editions, 2021) is dedicated to, “All the girls, everywhere,” yet the registers of identification also shift between I, you, and we. Moments are marked by cultural brands such as Tab, and by location cues, as in the first poem “Ann Arbor, 1974” where the speaker hitchhikes “all the way to South Bend.” These moments clue readers in: “Who are we?” Midwest-experienced Americans. 

Common themes in this collection are feminine: motherhood, the cost of beauty, sexuality. “We Dive” explores six years, beginning with, “Age 12, we dive and dive,” then quickly skipping to, “18, [where] we arrange chaise lounges and serve up the buffet of ourselves.”  From the perspective of an older, wiser observer the speaker examines how girls are turned into sex objects.

Never explicitly defined, the time period is identifiable as one when women’s bodies are not their own, controlled by outside forces. “Babies, Because” recognizes how girls are not given adequate sex education or many choices for birth control, so pregnancies occur, “because the rubber broke while hot and heavy in the backseat of the drive-in, because ginger-ale was an old wives’ tale.” 

The poem “Those Girls” is the gravity point of We, holding readers with five simple sentences ending in consequence: “Olga was fast as a muscle car, one of those girls. There on Friday, gone by Monday to care for a sick aunt in Florida. We knew better. We knew she’d be back in nine months, flattened, her brass tarnished. Smudged with the fingerprints of all who had driven her.” This compact poem compounds the social negativity already associated with reproduction. Without self-identification Olga comes back marked, “tarnished . . . smudged.”  The form of the poem adds to its conversational feel. It’s a story being shared between community members, a hushed code. From this coming-of-age tapestry arises a biting social commentary. 

Here are images of people hollowed out in various ways—purging, abortion—coming back “a ghost girl, rinsed of all but the hard, high notes.”

January, 2021