Review: Life After Rugby by Eileen G’Sell (reviewed by Laura Eppinger)

Life After Rugby

By Eileen G’Sell

Gold Wake Press, 2017

$15.95

ISBN: 978-1640084650

Eileen G’Sell’s poetry collection “Life After Rugby” (Gold Wake Press, 2018, $14.95, 74 pages) presents moments of wonder and pain through vocabulary and forms certain to enchant. The dedication of the collection includes two quotations to set the tone: one from Simone Weil about the fleeting beauty of the world, and this one from Mike Tyson: “There’s nothing more deadly and proficient than a happy fighter.”

With these fierce words in mind the reader is greeted by the first poem, “Follow the Girl in the Red Boots,” a sublime invitation to forget what “plenty of people” do, say or expect. There’s magic in the closing stanza:

“Follow the girl in the stolen shoes.
Follow the map that she made you.
Follow the soar of her certain song.
Plenty of people won’t.”

The entire poem celebrates…