I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? By Nolan Natasha

04Mar24

Personal relationships feature strongly in I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? Our attempts to connect are poignantly portrayed in the opening poem, “Walkie-talkie,” but a reader assuming these are simplistic poems just because they’re reasonably accessible would be mistaken. In “Rental Car,” it feels to me like our tentative hold on life gets a nod as, “Winter Tires hold us, just barely, / to this world, this monochrome day.”

A talented poet, Nolan Natasha has an eye for the kind of worthy detail that helps form a remarkable poem, as in “Gestures,” when a moment bumps the poet out of the usual perspective: “I catch my reflection in the lenses and see / for a moment, the man you see.”

Maturely, everyone inhabiting these poems is allowed complexity and does not come across as strictly or sharply defined. Queer isn’t to be easily defined, it isn’t one thing “written in heavy books.”

I found “Niagara Falls,” to be among the best poems in the book: an assortment of arresting snapshots in impressive detail unfold before a final few lines — I won’t spoil them here — take on a blend of mood and landscape to create a profound poem that, again, I think touches on mortality.

Nolan Natasha has written a superb collection here. It’s a collection that’s poignant and profound as well as honest and articulate. Quite simply, these are the reasons I turn to poetry.  

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