In her latest book, Allison Blevins explores intersections. Having recently been diagnosed with MS, she traces the points within her body, her queerness, and her family where juxtapositions wreak their havoc yet build a tender home. Using a hybrid structure of lyric essays and poems, she first and foremost explores pain—her own and that of her transitioning spouse.

Blevins breaks the collection into before her husband’s transition and after, opening Part I with “Cataloguing Pain as Marriage Counseling.” Within the one-page, one-paragraph stanzas of this 10-page, lyric piece, a life begins to unfold. At this point, the author refers to her wife and their children, conveying vivid metaphors for her physical pain and the difficult spaces through which she and this queer family navigate. In “A Catalogue of Repetitive Behaviors,” we learn of the author’s diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum. Similar to her recent MS diagnosis, this gives a name to her struggles. Names, words, and language are chosen with utmost care in this book, giving expression to difficult-to-articulate interactions with the world. 

“Cry out with me.”

A single line, on a single page within “Pain as Caged Birds,” one of the most remarkable pieces in the collection, asks us point-blank to join Blevins in giving voice to not only her pain, but to her experience as a queer, disabled mother, lover, caregiver, poet. Her choice to mix memoir, lyric essays, and poems effectively reflects the intersections of these experiences. A perfect example: “Elegy for My Wife,” a piece wherein the author mourns her wife’s body, transitions to Part II, wherein he has transitioned. From this point on, she refers to him as “my husband.”

“My husband is leaving behind his body captor. I am every day entering the body that will cage me. Cage me in the memory of a body without pain. I’m jealous of his healing. I am slowing—transparent film placed over the same still  frame. I’m paused, fading to pink. It is difficult for others to see how we will never be what we were, and I will never be what I would have been. Film too close to a melting light.” —from “Pain as Caged Birds”

Blevins, who also serves as Executive Editor of museum of americana, has successfully contained the not-easily-containable with Cataloguing Pain. Within it are a queer love story, a memoir about disability, and an intimate and visceral collection of catalogued experiences, chronicling both trauma and hope in pieces that, as the author herself says, “accumulate meaning over multiple pages.” For those looking for a collection that expands beyond its title, reaching beyond its container, gathering meaning as it goes, this is a brave, beautiful read.