“Everyone wants a rock bottom. Some Icarus shit. But the truth is some holes keep going, yawning, heady, one mistake becomes three: there’s always a dark darker than the dark you know.”

Hala Alyan’s The Twenty Ninth Year tells the story of transformation throughout different phases of life and the ways in which our memories of events can change over time.

Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist who discusses trauma, sexual orientation, being a woman in this world, eating disorders, alcoholism, forced displacement and immigrant identity in a raw and painful but ultimately hopeful way.

I found myself trying to read between the lines at times to figure out what Alyan meant with a certain passage and then I took a step back and realized, this is the beauty of poetry; understanding some passages but not all, yet still being able to empathize with the writer.
Our understanding shaped by our own experiences and memories.
After reading a beautiful poetry collection like this one, I’m always left with a yearning to know more about the pain we’re glimpsing through a poem. Share all of your stories, I want to say to poets like Hala Alyan, I’ll carry them with me, too.

I’m excited to read more of Alyan’s writing, especially now that I got two of her novels from the library