Description
Memories Lounge by Ujjvala Bagal Rahn spans the partitions of a woman’s life: the development of her character and independence, the finding and discarding mates as well as married life, and her experiences as sister, daughter, and mother. This collection is a mosaic which includes references to current South Asian-American culture, Buddhism, fantasy and mythology, a bit of career advice, a good-bye letter to Bruce Wayne, a reply to a Rita Dove poem, and the thoughts of the last Neanderthal. Many of the poems center on specific women, and some are autobiographical. A quartet of poems refers to a sisterly relationship with a dying brother-in-law. Memories Lounge begins with a portrait of a young woman about to leave home and ends with another portrait of a mother watching her daughter leave. The progress of the poems in Memories Lounge illuminates the arc of womanhood.
Praise for Memories Lounge
Pushcart nominee Ujjvala Rahn’s poetry collection, Memories Lounge, is nothing short of a knockout! She’s a poet who’s both technically highly skilled and whose content is totally original and emotionally moving. Indeed, I predict that with the publication of this book, her work will be embraced by poetry lovers everywhere.
—Rosemary Daniell,
author of The Murderous Sky: Poems of Madness and Mercy
and nine other books of poetry and prose.
Memories Lounge invites readers into intimate, interior reflections on a woman’s life, a carefully observed, personal tapestry of memory, grief, and possibility. This collection of poetry is a prism, refracting the struggle for self-identity, the resilience that emerges from trauma, the intricacies of love and desire, and the vulnerability of motherhood into the yearning to find connection and meaning amid hurt. Precisely detailed and emotionally honest, Ujjvala Bagal Rahn’s poems shine like the light in cracked glass: oblique fractures charting a luminous narrative line.
—Bryan Penberthy,
author of Lucktown
Ujjvala Bagal Rahn’s Memories Lounge is a remarkable journey from her teenage years to a young woman navigating adulthood, where mascara and the feminine are metaphors for survival. These poems are memories, but more so, her memories are pure poetry, where, because “memory is not enough,” one must experience a different world. She throws the reader into her internal life, takes her “girlhood’s failure,” and asks the reader to travel in her adult mind through time to “crack the door open” to where she is, “the shaft of light.” These poems are illuminating and insightful, from drugged-out Debbie’s botched drug deal to her “old Denim Jacket” becoming “her second skin,” Rahn “provoke[s an] avalanche….” This is a formidable poetry collection.
—William Walsh,
author of Haircuts for the Dead and Fly Fishing in Times Square
