Danielle Nicole Byington, in her poetry chapbook The Absurdity of Origins (dancing girl press, 2019), opens a dialogue with notable women and men of history. From Helen of Troy to Sigmund Freud, Dalí to Queen Mab, Byington creates an arena in which the sexes battle it out. In “Looking for Eve,” Eve loses herself in her reflection, descending to the realm of the devil, witchery, and sin. In “Cygnet,” Leda is given a chance to write her own story, one that does not end with the tragedy of rape but the success of the children borne of that day.
Throughout the chapbook, Byington gives a voice to women who have been scorned, judged, diminished. Byington also speaks to several men who participated in the shaming. “Dear Sigmund: My Oral Memoirs” flaunts the presence of the phallic in the everyday act, from sucking one’s thumb to chewing on a pencil in class. “Dalí, Dearest” describes the impact of Dalí’s surrealist art on the impressionable young mind of a two-year-old, then eight-year-old girl.
There is humor in the poetry in The Absurdity of Origins, there is heart, and there is vulnerability. In “The Scales of Belief,” a young girl dreams of becoming a mermaid, only to have her mother tell her “they’re not real” with crushing casualty. Beliefs can be altered so easily, sometimes with only a simple phrase. In “Botanical Male Model,” Byington challenges traditional gender stereotypes with, “he can be feminine, too.” The risqué, the hidden, the smothered are touched on in Byington’s chapbook. “Too Much for Fortuna’s Eyes” includes a description of menstruation (“The blood between her legs decides to / Shimmy the moon across the sky”), “Haven’t You Spoken So Clearly Before?” unflinchingly complicates the relationship between Lady Godiva, sexuality, desire, and manure (“Her hands extend / into the guts of existing space, / groping for the manure, the breasts”).
Byington, in a true feminist method, disrupts the patriarchal ideal of womanhood with the poems in her chapbook, expertly critiquing and valorizing what it means to be a woman, in all its nuances and complicated contradictions, while also remembering to include the man, of course, if only in the fringes, as illustrated by “Breakfast for the Hangman.” Byington’s poems are meant to be read with zeal and triumph, with longing and chuckles, with joy and admiration. The Absurdity of Origins is a chapbook for the ages.
By Abby Lewis
Abby N. Lewis is a poet from Dandridge, Tennessee. She earned her associate degree from Walters State Community College, where she received the faculty award in creative writing, and her BA in English from East Tennessee State University. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection Reticent (Grateful Steps, 2016) and the chapbook This Fluid Journey (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in over a dozen journals and magazines, including Timber, The Mockingbird, and Sanctuary. You can keep up with her on her website.