Ah, poetry. An art form long associated with rhythm and rhyme, truth and beauty, and, for some of us, a bewildering “I don’t get it” kind of awe. But pain? Spiritual or emotional, maybe, if you were paying attention in English class, or GPA-related if you weren’t, but real, ouch-that-hurts pain? Unlikely.
Now you can step toward that boxing feeling, thanks to a new book of free verse, Glass Jaw (Persea Books, $17). A slim volume at 88 pages, it offers remarkable poetry written by Dewey Elementary School and ETHS graduate Raisa Tolchinsky, 29, a former boxer. Now pursuing a master’s degree of religion in public life at Harvard, Tolchinsky credits teachers who encouraged her when she announced at age 12, “I’m going to be a poet.”
Or you can step away, which is what the Washington Post’s Ron Charles tried to do, writing, “Poems about boxing. No thanks.” He did come around: “I’ve never read anything quite like it.” You probably haven’t either.
The book is inspired by a mixture of experiences and insights: boxing, Dante (“a huge influence,” Tolchinsky said), a personal faith that finds joy in adversity, and the movie Dirty Dancing. (Yep.)
“If I can look directly at what really scares me or really haunts me, there’s actually more room for joy,” Tolchinsky told the RoundTable. “The depth of my grief is also the depth of that joy, and I want to experience both.”
And Dirty Dancing? “I love that movie,” Tolchinsky said. “Boxing and dancing have a lot in common. We took dancing classes [for] the footwork.” But she also “thought a lot about the power dynamic” between the adult dancer (Patrick Swayze) and his teenage student and love interest (Jennifer Gray): That “externalized” something “I really wanted to write about.”
Boxing by mistake
Tolchinsky first stepped into the ring in New York City after college in 2017, while working the usual odd jobs and looking for a life. “I came to boxing sort of by mistake,” she said. “I walked into the gym, took a class, and said, ‘Oh my gosh [OMG, to be clear]. I’ve been waiting for this.”
She committed to finding the joy in the adversity. “Waking up at five in the morning to lift weights at the first gym and then going to a second gym to box and spar,” she recalled. “Three or four hours a day.” She had to have hope.
Glass Jaw, in fact, begins and ends with hope, but in between hope seems to lose its way.
At the very beginning, even before the first bell, hope is still on its feet. “For those who have descended / and returned,” reads the dedication. A promising warm-up.
Fight your way to the end, and you’ll find hope again. But the blows you take to get there could send you hard to the mat. They begin right away, in the first entry, “I’m not sure why I still pray, or how I do it anymore.” That opens part one, “Diatribe on Women Gladiators.”
Then come first-person gladiator experiences, voiced individually by 11 women and one non-gendered Coach X. The poems are about boxing, yes, but also about strong women, how they get that way, and the tough love they share through boxing.
In “Bless the Boxing Ring,” Anna says, “Yes, I can do the hard things. Bless the hard things.” In a RoundTable interview, Tolchinsky explained: “For me, that’s a joyful idea, to knowingly head for something difficult and be present there.”
In the second entry, “The Trick Is Vick’s Vaporub, Salt, and Yellow Foundation,” Delia reveals the satisfaction she takes in landing a punch. “I smile at what I made. It blooms / on your left cheek as you say goddam / and circle its red rim with gold.”
Sisterly solidarity?
In apparent sisterly solidarity, Delia also takes satisfaction in her opponent’s punch: “… I almost forget / your jab in the first round stung / my cheek into a smile. I love you.”
And then there’s the crowd, ever present even for boxers who, like Tolchinsky, trained but didn’t take matches. Somebody is always watching, judging.
In “You’re a Woman Until You Spit Twice in the Bucket,” Carmen says: “The audience wants whiplash, / a mouthpiece slick with blood, / a few loose teeth / and applause loud enough to crack a beer bottle.”
The book’s second part, “Here This Hollow Space,” comprises 34 cantos, or stanzas, in descending order, clearly much more than a nod to the Italian poet. (Some readers will especially appreciate this section.) The framing quote is from Dante, the Inferno: “And now – with fear I set it down in meter.” What does that mean to Tolchinsky? “I know I’m writing something I need to be writing when I am terrified.”
Keeping the promise of the book’s dedication, hope does reappear at the very end in “How Hard a Thing It Is to Say,” Canto 1: “I’d seen how carpenters did it, / their knives and spoons. / Quick scrape, the hollow, / then the light.”
Said Tolchinsky: “Even after so much darkness there is hope even if it’s very difficult it’s still there.”
So, can you find truth or beauty in a broken nose or cauliflower ear? Or in words that dance in and out of understanding with so much fury they hurt?
Tolchinsky apparently thinks you can. Why not step into the ring, take on her words and find out?
Meet the author at 7 p.m. this Friday, April 12, at a reading at Women and Children First, 5233 N. Clark St., Chicago.