Tim Stobierski’s poetry collection Dancehall examines queer love. Split into five acts, it traces
the arc of a relationship, vacillating between its most beautiful medleys (from the poem
“Melody”: “the rain / played piano on my skin”) and its most dissonant (from the poem
“Crease”: “I’ve been creased before; / it doesn’t hurt, I promise, / nearly as much as you would
think.”). The speaker analyzes this breadth of experiences with the perspective that comes from
this relationship ending.
Woven through this grief is Stobierski’s imagery. His poems magnify the smallest
details—“snow and sleet catching, / melting in your hair”, cologne lingering in the hall, a
fingertip of “blue buttercream frosting.” Each of these images highlight the weight of the daily in
the speaker’s memory, how he misses not just the relationship’s grander gestures but also the
minute, and perhaps otherwise unmemorable, things. With these images, Stobierski paints a
picture of this couple’s intimacy.
Dancehall, though, is as much about intimacy as it is the ghost of that intimacy. Each of the five
acts features a couplet titled “Falling in love with you.” The first zeroes in on the brightness of
emerging from a darkroom, but, like the progression of the relationship, each subsequent couplet
features more ambivalent feelings: The third introduces overt tension and (dis)trust with the
possibility of love as frozen ice cracking, and the fifth ends on the word “done”, with an
inarguable finality; this dance has ended.
The second and fourth couplets are more ambiguous. The second appears harmonious on the
surface—finding “an old favorite song on the radio”—but it also incorporates a less pleasant
verb, “tripping”, as the speaker stumbles through the lyrics. While not outright tense, this word
foreshadows the difficulty that will appear in later couplets, such as the fourth, where the speaker
is trying to bake a cake—again, pleasant in theory, until the second line reveals the impossibility
of this task: the speaker has a recipe “but no measuring cups.”
This multiplicity of emotion appears in other poems as well. In “And if I am a spool of thread,”
the speaker requests that his partner:
[…] run me through your fingertips.
Unroll me across the floor
until I am vast and open.
Though these lines evoke sweet gestures like running fingers through hair, the middle of the
poem complicates this vulnerability with lines like “Wring my neck”, “my fraying chest”, and
the possibility that the speaker’s colors will run as a result of interactions with his lover. This is
not the blinding joy of “venturing into the sun” after time in a darkroom; this is the (potentially)
untrustworthy ice. Here, perhaps most clearly, Stobierski walks the line between intimacy and
the ghost of it, what lingers after the fact.
Subsequent poems further sketch these ghosts. The very next poem, “Like the sands of
Hammonasset”, equates the sand “pushed” by the ocean with being “caught in the eddies of your
love.” Gentler and more intimate imagery of love and hearts is once again paired with emotional
complications: the speaker is “caught” in the eddies; he is being “pushed and tugged and /
swirled”—moving under the power of his lover, and not on his own. In context with poems like
“And if I am a spool of thread,” “Like the sands of Hammonasset” brings up questions of agency
and power in love.
That Stobierski’s collection focuses on a queer relationship makes it all the more powerful, as
these relationships, especially when they’re complicated, are infrequently the focus of literary
works. (One notable exception is Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House, which
has been the target of various book bans.) By interspersing moments of queer joy and connection
in the solemnity of Dancehall, Stobierski gives voice, and space on the page, to queer folx who
have experienced complicated love.
In a world where queer books are so often banned, Stobierski’s collection is especially important.
It’s a worthwhile read for queer readers and allies alike.
Natalie Schriefer, MFA is a bi/demi writer often grappling with sexuality, identity, and shame.
She loves asking people about their fictional crushes (her most recent are Riza Hawkeye and
Gamora). A Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared online with CNN, Wired, Insider,
and NBC, among others. Find her on Twitter @schriefern1 or on her website at
http://www.natalieschriefer.com.
Dancehall, by Poet Tim Stobierski, [©Antrim House, July 2023] available at Amazon.com
Grey Sparrow Journal 