Published last summer by Finishing Line Press, Cheryl Whitehead’s debut collection, So Ghosts Might Stop Composing, is full of specters. The title of the collection suggests a couple of themes which initially drew me to this collection: foremost, I am enamored by anything with ghosts. Also, the action of composing caught my attention; the word harkens to the idea of musical compositions—which are a vehicle driving this collective force—but more intriguingly, composing seems the opposite a word with which ghosts are typically associated: decomposing. This possibility of re-composing ghosts into life interested me even more than the ghost-beings themselves.

Within the silken web of previous family and career-related traumas, there are soft breaths of an orchestra, as Whitehead’s poem “A Woman Under the Influence” showcases. Whitehead’s family tale features a doting mother who “cuts her wrist. / When Daddy wrestles the blade away, / she escapes & climbs on the couch. / Twirling & singing Swan Lake, / she twists her bloody wrist.” 

Whitehead’s collection is a kind of musical composition itself, a “Danse Macabre” with delicacy and interludes of darkness. There are not only ghosts in this collection; there are also personal insights, such as those found in “Ballad,” which reflects, “Is it wrong to say I want to sleep /  next to a woman, brown and lovely / to the touch—her body singin g/ as sweet as Coltrane and Dolphy / playing strains of Naima /  on a back-lit stage?”

The tones throughout Whitehead’s collection resemble a Devil's Tritone, full of unexpected pairings of flat and sharp notes. As orchestral music, there is a deep listening experience while reading Whitehead’s poetry. There are musical ties throughout the collection, nods mixed with poetry as from “Sing, Yes,” where Whitehead notes, “Beethoven’s . . . convalescent breath / filling the old man’s spirit / like leaves in dead wind.” Moments like these throughout Whitehead’s collection suggest classic Poe hauntings are surely afoot. 

Even in Whitehead’s poem “Classically Trained” there is an assumption that the title relates to being fluent in classical music. But the subject of this poem gives us a different meaning: “Under his name /  his age will appear, and the time / his body will show in the parlor / at Poitier Funeral Home. That day I’ll sit / in my car, leaning my head on the steering wheel. / ‘Miss W., you too sensitive / to work at this school,’ Valsean says.” Carried by sound, Whitehead’s tales are of teaching and sensitivity, of vulnerability, of gun violence. While Whitehead does recompose family ghosts, the ghosts she is primarily reconstructing are children who have tragically passed away.

Whitehead’s music references are not all classical. Sometimes, Blues bursts through, like this stanza: “On the nights I’m loneliest . . . The south / pours over the stage floor like a river cresting its banks” (“Impressions”). There are also reprieves of Gospel juxtaposing violence, where “voices are a black blanket wrapping up /  the cold inside his head. Pop-pop-pop-pop! /  Gunshots slice the air. Isaiah rolls onto the floor. / ‘Shit!’ he hears a familiar voice . . . ‘Tell this lady /  what’s wrong.’ Isaiah leans back. / His eyes snap shut. He feels the mango- / sweet breeze against his skin” (“Sixth Grade Insomniac”).

The sounds of music, of gun shots, and of voices demand attention in Whitehead’s poetry. Take a moment to ask yourself: How often do you read a collection of poems out loud? How often do you read single poems out loud? After reading “Liberty City Lullaby,” the first thing I did was jump to the internet in search for Whitehead performing this poem. I needed to hear the words out loud. (This is a request, Cheryl, please upload yourself to YouTube!) When the internet failed me, I had no choice but to read it aloud myself. The pace is slow and staccato with anaphora guiding each line. Sequential rhyming lines add to this Lullaby: “I fear teddy bear shrine s/ & Stop the Violence signs / I fear the gaping ground / & a small coffin going down.”

Whitehead owns these stories, but she doesn't just display them; she wrestles and struggles against them. She tries to bring these ghosts back into being through a grief many of us also try to compose. And she succeeds in composing these ghosts, bringing them into breath through every line.