Lady Saturn by Wanda Deglane: Review

I received an advance copy of Wan­da Deglane’s Lady Sat­urn for review pur­pos­es. As always, this review reflects only my hon­est opin­ions on the book.

Lady Saturn by Wanda Deglane

Pub­li­ca­tion Date:  Feb­ru­ary 2019

Genre: Poet­ry

Lady Sat­urn by con­tem­po­rary poet Wan­da Deglane is in itself a nav­i­ga­tion through depres­sion and anx­i­ety to find love – the utmost impor­tant self-love.

These per­son­al poems tra­verse the back­drop of what it means to be born into chaos, to feel unwant­ed and unloved, to be con­stant­ly seek­ing and attempt­ing self-dis­cov­ery, to strug­gle to sleep with a rac­ing mind or to defeat depres­sion and anx­i­ety with the help of a pill that makes her brain like her ‘mother’s old microwave, / con­stant­ly short-cir­cuit­ing and cast­ing the whole room / in dark­ness.’ Take this quest through beau­ti­ful, lyri­cal stan­zas and vivid imagery depict­ing pain, trau­ma, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and a deep yearn­ing to land soft­ly at a place on the verge of inner accep­tance and love, just the way you are, seek­ing that hap­py-go-lucky soul you once inhabited.

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My Review:

“Sing to us of her who wears vio­lents on her breasts.  Sing espe­cial­ly of her who is wan­der­ing.” ‑Sap­pho

So begins Lady Sat­urn, with an epi­graph that tru­ly encom­pass­es the spir­it of this chap­book. I actu­al­ly went into this review think­ing I’d pick a favourite poem to quote from and go from there.  How­ev­er, pick­ing up the book led to every few poems becom­ing my new favourites, and I quick­ly aban­doned that task.

These poems inter­twine the utter­ly human real­i­ty of trau­ma and men­tal ill­ness with an inde­scrib­able, ethe­re­al qual­i­ty that makes even the crush­ing of a spi­der beau­ti­ful. Read­ing through these poems is like hear­ing Wan­da’s voice, dis­em­bod­ied, speak­ing to you through the pages. It’s a won­der­ful experience

Lady Sat­urn starts with an image of birth–“you were born scream­ing.” It then glides through life and death just as eas­i­ly as it does time and space. Here I can’t help but ref­er­ence the cover–the imagery (shown above) is a beau­ti­ful com­ple­ment to the pieces housed within.

This is a love­ly col­lec­tion that won’t take long to read. But it will stay with you long after.

About the Author:

Wan­da Deglane is a night-bloom­ing desert flower from Ari­zona. She is the daugh­ter of Peru­vian immi­grants and attends Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty, pur­su­ing a bachelor’s degree in psy­chol­o­gy and fam­i­ly & human devel­op­ment. Her poet­ry has been pub­lished or forth­com­ing from Rust + Moth, Glass Poet­ry, L’Ephemere Review, and For­mer Cac­tus, among oth­er love­ly places. Wan­da self pub­lished her first poet­ry book, Rainlily, in 2018.