Diana Salier’s “Wikipedia Says It Will Pass” (A Review by William Henderson)

Call love a battlefield, and you’ll have to call Diana Salier, author of the just-out chapbook, wikipedia says it will pass, a soldier. I’d call her a gold-medal winning heartbreak Olympian, but she’d counter that she is no such thing and that I should, instead, focus on how she infuses her story of love and its loss with pop culture references and bleak attempts at coming clean about getting hurt.

She doesn’t cry at the end of Titanic, is growing dissatisfied with San Francisco, and loves fiercely and without looking down to make sure a net can catch her. She loves with her eyes open and with her eyes shut. She loves in bed, on top, underneath, and she loves even after the love is no longer returned. This collection doesn’t make clear just what passes between the women, or why this affair is simply something else to be remembered, but Salier loved. Clearly, Salier loved, as you can see in i like human as a word but not as a concept:

let me take a screenshot of your brain matter

i’m not afraid of the wrinkles

i love the wrinkles

they’re so wrinkly and fantastic

let me make a short film of you walking away

naked on the stairs in an indefinite loop

that I can add my own soundtrack to

—

if I’d known you back then I would’ve signed your yearbook

have a great summer, don’t have too much fun without me … ps I love you

i would’ve called and hung up while you watched saved by the bell

—

i like human as a word

i like human as a word

but not as a concept

and not as an excuse

—

what’s your general purpose

what’s your gist?

give it to me in 140 characters or less

do I need an excuse to be here

do I have to show my ID just to be born

—

i see people’s faces in my dreams

i’ve never met in real life

and I think wouldn’t that be weird

if I met them in real life

If you’re looking for couplets (or even happy couples), or if you’re looking for sentences that rhyme every other time, look elsewhere. wikipedia is not an easy read, though I cannot remember the last time a collection of poems caused me to jot down a timeline of the poet’s story (you don’t really need to know the when and the why; just enjoy Salier’s words). I suppose what draws me to Salier’s words, is the way her story resonates. I’ve been Salier, and I’ve been her ex, and I’ve been the girl in the bar watching some stranger playing pool and always ending with the eight ball, corner pocket.

Salier loved, and the loss of this love hurts. Of course the loss of this love hurts. She and the ex, who is not named, attempt to remain gchat friends (who hasn’t attempted to remain gchat friends with an ex?), and when this level of friendship becomes impossible, Salier writes poems, since these poems are the only way she can talk to her ex.

But Salier, or at least the Salier captured in these raw and accessible shattershot attempts at closure, is no victim. No longer her ex’s build me up buttercup, and no longer playing pinball in a two-step seduction with the girl who stole her heart, Salier emerges ready to move on, but willing to wait as long as moving on takes.

So Salier will roll her eyes at my attempts at telling the love story inherent in these poems. She’s already told the love story inherent in these poems. She’d point out the way in which she marries modern-day convenience (Craigslist, Gmail, even Wikipedia) to the way she is moving on, or the way she is trying to move on. And I get. Of course I get it. But Craigslist and Gmail and even Wikipedia are as ubiquitous as love is. If ex is stuck in airplane mode, does that make Salier’s love any less tangible? Of course not. But how perfect the allusion. I’ve had a lover in airport mode, there, but not. Salier just coined a perfect phrase for this type of person.

Salier, about her ex: “this is the thing about you: you want to be with someone for a long time who wants to be with you for a long time,” and the same could be said of the relationship Salier cultivates, within an economical 28 pages, with and to the reader. Fall into her world and plan to stay a while.

wikipedia says it will pass is available at lulu.com. For more information about Salier, check out dianasalier.com.