Todos Lost Fantasmas De Esta Casa/All the Ghosts in This House

Todos Los Fantasmas De Esta Casa/All the Ghosts in This House by Frydha Victoria and translated by J. Allen Steiman.

Welcome to this unofficial meeting of the Reading in Public book club.

We will start by reciting the Reader's Oath: I shall not poo poo on someone else's joy. The speed at which I read does not reflect my intelligence or character. It is simply a sign of my available time and overall exhaustion. I will DNF without mercy and tell everyone to read that one book no one else likes (because it was my favorite).

How I Met This Book

In my previous Sunday Dispatch, I told you about the folklore and crypted festival that I stumbled upon while on vacation with some friends.

At that festival, I came upon a booth for Walnut Street Publishing. I knew immediately I was going to spend all of my money at this booth.

They are a small, independent press, and they were selling a bit of everything they published, notably, their first poetry translation called Todos Los Fantasmas de Esta Casa/All the Ghosts in This House.

Tell Me More

To better understand, the work is a whole. I'm going to give you a brief bio of the creators:

• Frydha Victoria, the author, holds a communications degree, has been published in several anthologies, and is the recipient of the Nayarit State Poetry Prize.
• Jared Allen Steiman, the translator, is also a poet and educator in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He’s been published in several anthologies and is a recipient of the Fulbright García–Robles award.
• Alea Coble, the cover artist, is also a poet. Her bio in the back of the book describes her as “an interdisciplinary artist, with a focus on hand-drawn animations, performance, poetry, experimental writing, DIY publishing, and sculpture.”

I admit, I don’t typically read every bio in the back of a book. Having reread these a couple of times, I regret not reading others in the past. These brief introductions were very helpful as I read through the work—it established the skill level and the commonality between everyone involved.

When you’re reading a book of poetry and even the cover artist is a poet who understands the purpose of the work, you know you’re about to experience something cohesive through every page.

I want to briefly touch on the paragraph that describes the contents of the book, because I read it once at the festival, once at our Airbnb, once before I began reading, and twice since finishing it.

The back of the book reads as follows:

Frydha Victoris'a All the Ghosts in This House is history inverse. To crack its cover is to open the garden gate, to walk beneath the shade trees, where three generations of women tend to flowers and play in dirt. We see bodies like houses: built and inhabited, reduced to rubble and built a new. The dead live on in dreams. Broken clocks and mirrors, confused time and space. Truth falls into memory like blood into water – ripping, darkening, and soaking into the Earth.

How did I not know this book was going to be so painful to read?!

The Experience

Typically, I don’t seek out poetry. Much like music, I found what I liked and stuck to it. I spent my teenage years reading Sylvia Plath and T.S. Eliot. I also had lyric collections from Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Jewel.

I couldn’t tell you exactly when it happened, but at some point, I stopped exploring poetry—including lyric collections. I can safely say that seeking new poetry and new music is not on my radar at all.

I know what I like, and honestly, most music and poetry are too emotional for me these days. I don’t like things with heavy, gut-punch feelings. I had my fill of that as a teenager.

That isn’t to say I don’t respect and appreciate artists who are able to reach into our minds and pull out very human emotions. When you write a book that makes somebody feel something physical, you’ve done your job as a writer. Whether the reader likes it or not doesn’t matter—you were successful.

This author was very successful. I found this book utterly painful. It was not a pleasure to read. It was work.

More than once, I almost set this book down, never to be picked up again. Not because the writing wasn't good. The writing is beautiful. The structure, formatting, and length of the pieces are all very pleasing, but the contents is absolutely heartbreaking.

My teenage self would have loved this. It is gritty and brutally honest. This book would have stayed in my backpack for months.

My current reading self respects the work, but would not have recommended it to myself in this current phase of my life.

This book deals a lot in the breakdown of the female form and the roles of women. Various pieces report on birth, menstruation, loss, dementia, and death with a poets tongue, and I am not ashamed to admit that I am too sensitive to read works like this.

I'll conclude by saying this: I don't know who I would recommend this poetry collection too, but I know that I wouldn't have recommended it to myself right now. It left me feeling a little darker than I prefer to feel.

I read the entire collection, and the author made me feel every single stanza. She was incredibly successful.

Reading in Public

In this section, I'll share any notes or favorite quotes from the book. These were taken while reading, and spoilers will often appear here. You've been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

Pg. 9 - Well, that was heart-wrenching. "So much is hidden in the reef of her body."

Pg. 11 - The formatting of this one reminds me of T.S. Elliot.

Pg. 29 - This collection is dark.

Pg. 47 - I'm invading the author's privacy. This is a deeply personal book. A big share. It's so raw and painful to read. It's breaking my heart. My 16 year old self would love this. My self now at 43 wants to make the author a cup of coffee, put a weighted blanket on her, and watch Frasier with her.