An Intimate Sharing: Review of Sanna Wani's My Grief, the Sun
Sanna Wani, My Grief, the Sun.
House of Anansi, 2022. $19.99 CAD.
Order a copy from House of Anansi.
Sanna Wani’s debut poetry collection, My Grief, the Sun, is an ode to grief, to love, to God, to Islam, to language. The book reads like a long-form answer to the question posed in the Wanda Vision quote, “What is grief, but love persevering?” Despite the fact that one of the collection’s central themes is grief, the book does not feel heavy. Rather, the weightlessness with which Wani pens these poems is indicative of the many ways we do not realize how grief can exist in the small pockets of life, and how its constant distribution makes it manageable to carry after all. The ways Wani intertwines narratives of grief into love or into religion disrupts the narrative that grief is all-consuming in its negativity; rather, Wani appears to pose the question: how can we have grief without love?
The book opens with the poem, “Masha’allah (after Danusha Laméris),” which, given the Islamic themes throughout the collection, is an intentional stylistic choice. One can interpret the utterance as a form of overcoming grief and the exhale that follows. This poem, and the other intentional choices to include parts of Islam and the author’s Muslim identity, feel like Easter eggs only meant for those who already understand. This protected inaccessibility reads as radical, and is yet another reason why Wani’s work is so valuable.
Wani is playful with her choosing of words in this collection. Despite the fact that this is a written collection, it feels as though many of these poems are meant to be read aloud. Consider the following passage from “II. San and Moro” of the poem, “Princess Mononoke (1997)”: “Pour water over each wound. What about the wound inside me, the wound I was born into? Where do I pour when I am the wound? I am what wounds me” (16). Each segment from this quote could easily stand alone as its own powerful line. And yet, Wani chooses to have these segments in succession, mirroring one another in their slight variations. Visually, the quote is pleasing to read, and the emotions that it evokes are all the more powerful. This theatricality can also be seen in the following passage from the poem, “That moth, breathing”: “My mother has never let me kill a moth. She says, Take it outside and I do. I release it into the night, or it, the night, into me” (91). There is nary a word that appears careless in Wani’s writing: each is picked carefully to hold a particular purpose in each poem. As a reader, there is a certain respect attributed to this level of care that we are held by from the author herself.
The way in which Wani writes makes it abundantly clear that we are given a part of herself that only she is able to give us. There is a sincere honesty and a devout willingness to be vulnerable that is read from her words. Consider these lines from the poem, “Meditation (after Aisha Sasha John)”: “I have a vein in that finger that goes directly to my heart. / Is there any part of me that doesn’t go directly to my heart?” (18). This one inquisition, though rhetorical, generously peels back yet another layer of the author, further deepening the author-reader relationship.
Wani’s title poem, “My Grief, the Sun,” is one of the first first-person narrative prose poems of the collection. The choice to have this poem appear halfway through the collection feels like a delayed introduction to the author, but one that is worth the wait. The reader is able to stand upon a formed foundation of who Wani is and what she stands for. The title poem approaches grief head-on, in a way that is in contrast to the way grief is intricately woven into many of the collection’s other poems. Consider the following passage: “I wear your ring every day and I feel strange without it but I still don’t call it mine. I think I feel similarly about your loss. I stare at grief and try to call it mine, then feel terrible, then selfish. I stare at your grave and try to pray, then wonder what kind of grief prayer is” (47). This inclusion of the first person, especially for a poem that is as sentimental as this one is, feels intentional, and one that the reader must be thankful for. The poem reads like a monologue, spoken to an audience of just the reader. This intimate sharing is one that greatly advances the theme of grief throughout the collection.
Another central facet of the theme of grief is the discussion of it through the lens of faith and how it extends to the self. The line of Wani’s from the poem, “Start talking about God’s form then / but how does God look in his most beautiful form?” reads as follows: “Belief is touch. This is the only theological proof” (32). These simple statements uphold much of Wani’s work in this piece as it pertains to faith. When Wani writes about things as central as the body, she extends these themes. Consider these lines from the poem, “Who is The Sun, Asking for Sleep?”: “Part of having a body means whatever can be felt can be forgotten” (49). This deep belief in the body’s relationality to its environment, to the world, to God, is not lost on the reader. It exudes a sort of gratitude: a form of payment back to the world, to remind the body where it came from. These reminders from Wani are ones that keep the reader grounded in the belief that we are bigger than ourselves.
Reading Wani’s collection felt like being a kite: I was able to float above myself, exploring the words and the spaces beside them, while still being held grounded by a careful hand. I am wishfully looking forward to her future collections.
Namitha Rathinappillai (she/her) is a Tamil-Canadian spoken word poet, artist, and writer who has entered the poetry community in 2017. She has been involved with Urban Legends Poetry Collective (ULPC) ever since her engagement with the Ottawa arts community, and made ULPC history as the first female and youngest director. She is a two-time Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) team member with Urban Legends Poetry Collective, and she published her first chapbook, Dirty Laundry with battleaxe press in November 2018. She has been involved as a performer and a workshop facilitator within the Ottawa community at spaces such as Tell em Girl, Youth Ottawa, the Artistic Mentorship Program, Carleton Art Collective, The Fembassy, Youth Services Bureau, and more.