Marina Burana

Kristen Case’s Daphne: Beauty, Women and Meditations on Nothingness

         The Greek philosopher Parmenides was of the idea that whatever is, is, and cannot not be. Everything is one, eternal and unchanging. Another Greek philosopher, Anaximander, on the other hand, thought everything is undefined and of infinite substance. The origin of everything is “the Boundless” (to apeiron, τὸ ἄπειρον) and opposites are initially latent within this original principle, prior to being separated. These philosophical considerations, among many others, appear throughout Kirsten Case’s wonderful new poetry collection, Daphne.

            One of the poems, “Horror Vacui,” is a long meditation on (essentially) nothing; a well-crafted intellectual journey—almost a poem/essay—that renders homage to antiquity (and Edgar Allan Poe, with a few others) and the idea of being and nothingness. We are slowly introduced to what lies beyond the existential nature of the pyrrhic foot (two unstressed syllables) as a complete concept. Poe is quoted in the poem: “The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm is purely chimerical” (The Rational of Verse). His idea about the impossibility of the pyrrhic foot is similar to Parmenides’ notion regarding nothingness, according to Case. The Greek philosopher warns us that there is no such thing as “nothingness,” since whatever is cannot not be. Two unstressed syllables cannot exist because you would ultimately need something to counterbalance the “nothingness” of the unstressed. But like most of the poems in this book, the conversation around the themes presented in them often insinuates something else, a larger human debate, and also a very private, personal universe of someone searching for answers and diving into an artistic impulse that tries to show the burden of existing in a territory of inference and possibility. The final words of this poem are: “Imagine the nothing you would feel, untying it” (Case, 2025: 47).

            With profound literary prowess and exceptional wit, Case masterfully plays with language, knowledge, philosophy, history and, of course, emotions. I find it utterly impossible to craft a concise review of this book, as its richness defies brevity. Every time I try to focus on a particular aspect, another one emerges, dancing over my shoulder and urging me to delve deeper. It is a challenge and a delight to attempt to capture its essence in words. She writes, “A weeping cloud distributes itself. A weeping cloud is a disbursal of / small blue currents of equal size in all directions. A weeping cloud / sheds so much feeling feeling ceases to feel anything beyond the / labor of release and the labor of reception. Weeping, like shaking, is / the body gone into ungatherable being” (Case, 2025: 15).

            Case writes of form, she seeks it, she lets the idea/poems be born in it and then she deconstructs it and reinvents reality from a perspective uniquely her own, sheltered within her boundless well of knowledge. There is a compelling meditation on life and the lyricism of a world that needs to be built and rebuilt constantly. There is also—and this is actually very important in the structural unfolding of the book—a discussion about womanhood and the role of women in a world of men. The Greek nymph Daphne and Apollo and Daphne, the sculpture by Bernini, which decorates the cover, appear among the book’s pages too and suggest the beginning of an unending, almost impossible, conversation about the body, the self and the obstacles to fully experiencing reality as a woman. “Daphne’s marble fingers sprout marble leaves. / As if the stone were liquid, were air: everything is in motion; / everything touches everything. His arms curve around her. His / rand rests where the rising bark meets her vanishing body.” (Case, 2025: 60).

            As I read, I sense a deeper question and a more profound understanding of the metaphysics hidden in the cracks of a world driven by material pursuits and our desire to satisfy certain “needs” that ultimately become mere luxuries. And I think of Henry David Thoreau—an author whose work Case has studied extensively—when he says that these so-called needs “are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind” (Thoreau, 2018: 13). In a way, these poems roam through an expansive questioning, whose aim is ultimately to lead us to some form of enlightenment—to a more comprehensive and elevated abstraction of the self.

            But not everything is intellect. Above all else, I believe this is a book of beauty. Case says, “Of all the things I could tell you, what happened explains the least” (Case, 2025: 45). There is beauty in the arrangement of words, in the insightful take on reality, in the fascinating imagery the poems present. “Your whole being leaning toward / the thin and continual and indifferent exchange, / a pale moss of repeated small forms over- / taking your skin, even this / annihilation now a kind of harmony” (Case, 2025: 48). There is beauty on the cover, in the references to art, music, and literature. Sentences have a way of conveying an immensity that is born out of a particularity in order to complete a beautiful, mesmerizing image. “At / the bottom of your breath you can feel this place in yourself: the / edge of your inertia. This is the place where your being would fold, / give way, unbecome” (Case, 2025: 67).  

            Kristen Case’s work resists being confined to the boundaries of paper. It cannot be fully captured or contained by the restrictive tyranny of logos. Her creative expression seems to be a continuous exploration of inaccessible possibilities, probing the stark dichotomy between what can exist and what cannot—and, moreover, questioning the secret poiesis between the two.

Case, Kristen, Daphne. 2025. Tupelo Press.

Thoreau, Henry David, Walden and Civil Disobedience. 2018. Collins Classics.