Fjords Reviews

Poetry
Erotic: New and Selected Poems
by Alexis Rhone Fancher

New York Quarterly Books
142 pages
ISBN 978-1630450717

October 20, 2022

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Erotic: New and Selected Poems

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s poetry often explores how our sexuality is not just an expression of who we are and how we see ourselves but is a primal force that pushes us to the truths of our deepest selves and our relationship to others around us. In her newest collection Erotic: New and Selected Poems, Fancher explores sexuality and its ramification with and beyond the sexual partner. These are the masterwork of an artist who has taken seriously a topic that is often thought of only in the most casual terms.

Fancher is able to use her discussion of the erotic to get at human need in all its complexity. Relationships are not all about sex, but sexuality reveals the intricacies of relationships. In “Walk All over You,” Fancher personifies red stiletto boots that

have a short attention span, choose
not to remember why they were banished, or what
you did. They’re desperate to reclaim you,
dig their heels into your shortcomings
make little marks up and down your libido.
Welcome you home (81).

In this poem, she investigates the complexity of need through the lens of the erotic. She uses it to show how human need is layered. She is not just someone who is angry or ready to forgive or jealous. She is all of these things at once, and of course so are we all. In “When,” we’re given a snapshot of a larger life through her relationship with her husband:

when he pushes me onto the bed when takes my breasts in his hands
when his tongue moves down my body when I admit
he knows best how I like it when he admits he can’t live without me (122).

Here, Hemingway’s iceberg theory is in full effect. We construct the rest of the relationship in our minds through this snapshot of sex.

Fancher allows us to see how our sexual relationships extend to all parts of our lives including to those people with whom we are not having sex. Most notably, through several poems, she develops the tension and friendship that she has with her sister, as the two of them engage in a kind of power struggle through their erotic relationship. This gets at the root of many sibling relationships. We often are struggling for autonomy through power, and Fancher uses sex to give voice to this need because it is one of the aspects of that relationship that is expressed clearly through the physical act. “when your mother convinces you to take in your homeless younger sister . . . (a sister poem)” captures that dynamic well:

While you’re at work, your sister will tend your garden,
weed the daisies, coax your gardenias into bloom.
No matter how many times you remind her,
she will one day forget to lock the gate;
your cat and your lawn chair will disappear.

Your mother will say it serves you right.

Your sister will move into your boyfriend’s
big house in Laurel Canyon (63).

Here, sexuality expresses the relationship with greatest clarity. She uses it as a symptom of a problem or a personality, not as some kind of detached and distinct event that destroyed an otherwise normal relationship. Sex is a integral part of our lives, and Fancher shows us how it is.

It should be noted that sex is fun, and these poems often are too. While Fancher goes deep, she also keeps herself and us aware of the fact that sex is also thrilling and joyful and funny.