All the Rage in the Afterlife This Season
Finishing Line Press
$19.99
You can purchase a copy here.
Reviewed by Katch Campbell
Understanding the Unfathomable:
A Review of Marcus S Cafagña’s “All the Rage in the Afterlife This Season
In 1995, after being chosen for the National Poetry Series, for, The Broken World, Yusef Komunyakaa told Marcus Cafagña he was writing about trauma. True then (his wife Dianne committed suicide in 1993,) and true now, Cafagña is a poet who observes the smallest details and brings forth the emotions they elicit. Often his work is a processing of trauma, but Cafagña also weaves humor and playfulness into the space. During our conversations about his life and work Marcus shared that poems are not always about emotion, but “for me it is about 90% emotion.” “One summer at Community of Writers in Squaw Valley, I was able to have a dinner with Sharon Olds and she shared her thoughts on the eight levels of emotion. I left that dinner wanting to touch all eight levels. That conversation changed my process. I am looking to touch something on an involuntary level.” “I do seem to write about trauma, but I need humor too.”
Hence the title of this most recent collection, published by Finishing Line Press in 2023, All the Rage in the Afterlife This Season, holds this duality of meaning in reverence to ongoing traumas and with a subtle wink of the eye to his always fashion forward, former wife. All the Rage…This Season, the central metaphor of this collection, is indicative of what you will find inside.
The collection is broken into three sections which gave this reader an opportunity to walk away, regroup, and return to the work after processing. Each poem presents moments and memories of people. And Cafagña brings his promised 90% emotion. Often when reading a collection, I will hop around and read a poem here or there and then front to back straight through but, for me, the impact of this collection is at its fullest effect when read in its ordained order. As a reviewer I want to tell you to read this poem or another to pique interest, but I want you to read them all. I want to say, buy all of Marcus’ books, and you should, but this is the one that is dog eared with a perfect pantoum that I return to when sitting on the back porch late at night, in the still air, with the sound of crickets. It has become the only other book with a permanent home on my nightstand.
All the Rage in the Afterlife This Season is the product of a mature soul, a master of mechanics, one who understands that the rhythm of language is the magic, who has lived through the unimaginable and brings it to bear witness.
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/all-the-rage-in-the-afterlife-this-season-by-marcus-cafagna/
https://www.communityofwriters.com
https://paintedbride.org/
Philadelphia note: 1996/97 Cafagña was living in Philadelphia and ran the Painted Bride Art Poetry Series as a favor to Major Jackson.
Katch Campbell is a connector. With a master’s degree in Science and an MFA in poetry, she creates metaphors for her patients and others about the world around us. Her work is an inquiry on the atrocities we commit consciously and unconsciously against each other and the universe. Katch serves as Vice President and is a permanent faculty member at the River Pretty Writing Retreat, a bi-annual workshop in the Ozarks. She has co-led immersive poetry trips to Slovenia and Italy and used to edit for ZoMag.com.