re: andrea gibson’s “TO MY LOVE ON THE DAY SHE DISCOVERED TUMBLR AND EVERY LOVE POEM I EVER WROTE TO EVERY WOMAN I LOVED BEFORE HER”
I was perusing a bookstore when I came across Pansy by Andrea Gibson. I’d just gone to an open mic in a bookstore that had been, in part, an ode to Gibson—how many people they touched with their work, how relatable and accessible the work felt. The host, before the mic began, said something like you don’t realize, when somebody passes, how much you’ll regret not getting new work from them. I’m going to miss their blog.
I appreciated that note, and I love so many of the bookstores in Atlanta. I have this sense of urgency whenever I’m in one, like I need to patronize this store, because if I don’t, if we all don’t, then where are we going to wander around when we don’t know what to read? (I mean, also the library, but there is that communal feeling in a bookstore too, the sense that if you buy a book, you’re helping this place where books are collected and the writers who make the books.)
Anyway, I was perusing, and I found this book Pansy, and I read this poem called “TO MY LOVE ON THE DAY SHE DISCOVERED TUMBLR AND EVERY LOVE POEM I EVER WROTE TO EVERY WOMAN I LOVED BEFORE HER,” which I promptly read. Afterward, I bought the book, and now that I’ve read more of Andrea Gibson’s work, I think something that’s really special about it is that a lot of it is in this river-running confessional style where they just tell you what they’re thinking without worrying too much about poise. Coming from MFA World, I think I’ve always had the inclination to cut and cut some more and cut some more for good measure, until there is nothing on this page that isn’t totally necessary. It’s the urgency of not overpacking your suitcase so that you don’t have to stand there all embarrassed while security tells you you’ve brought too much stuff. Andrea Gibson, in a lot of this book at least, is maximalist in the language they use, in how much they say. They don’t seem worried so much about how they might be perceived if they bring a lot of stuff on the trip. They’re here to tell you everything and to tell you in the same way they might tell a close friend, which is probably, in part, why so many people love reading their work. It feels like a confession they’re making to you or that you overheard while they were telling some other “you.” Here, the “you” is their partner, who has come across their romantic paper trail.
“It doesn’t matter / that you may have a slight tendency / toward extreme jealousy,” the poem opens, and then goes on to talk about how hard it would be for anyone to see who their person used to be with. They talk about how hard it was for them when they saw a picture of their partner’s “mortifyingly attractive ex” and how much more difficult the whole situation became when they realized this ex was not only hot but worked at Trader Joe’s. This fact made Gibson certain that the ex “was a better lover.” They paused to say, “F— all the hot people at Trader Joe’s.” Then, they reminded their partner that neither of them “wan[t] the truth / filed down and hidden from the guards,” but that both of them should remember that all of the lovers they had before helped them find each other.
Not gonna lie, as someone who also has “a slight tendency / toward extreme jealousy,” if just because I’m a Scorpio, I felt very seen by Gibson’s admission that knowing the person you love once romantically loved someone else can be hard. I also felt kind of healed by the meaning they drew from it, this sense of the past as guardrails that nudge you to the present, and this present as precedent now, a place to climb even further from or to help you remember what the bare minimum should be.
I love this poem, in its excess, in its revolving “you”—you as Tumblr, a tattletale for sharing all their past odes to lovers, you as the too hot people of Trader Joe’s, you as this lover, whose feelings are hurt, and also as this lover, moving past it—the excess here, the maximalism, the “here is everything” feeling calmed me down too, like I was the “you” being apologized to for any rational or irrational sense of transgression. It’s an apology poem, in a way, and in its refusal to cut down the language—even that gorgeous title!—we get the sense that here is everything laid out on the table, all there was to say.
