Amy Penne has reviewed L. J. Sysko’s collection The Daughter of Man at Compulsive Reader.
Sysko’s poetics are enviable. I’m jealous of her seemingly effortless ability to float between the particular and the universal with ease. In “tablescape” from the Warrior section, the poet compares women to “hares pears plums pomegranates women/ we’re portraiture’s chorus line/ having kicked our legs into one/ busby berkeley bloom/ and opened our necks/ to composition’s beheading.” This striking image of woman as composition, as an artform compared to a still life basket of fruit juxtaposed to a 1930’s Busby Berkeley composition is as musical as it is imagistic. This brilliant poem ferries the reader in between two of Sysko’s most robust ekphrastic poems in the collection, both based on the paintings of the 17th-century Italian Baroque master, Artemisia Gentileschi. “Tablescape,” juxtaposes one ekphrastic musing about Gentileschi’s Self Portrait As the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura) against one of the artist’s most famous paintings, Judith Beheading Holofernes, and creates the perfect triptych detailing woman on display, woman taking agency, and woman “rooted on the edge” of what is, and is not, acceptable behavior. Sysko conjures art and artists in this cauldron of poetic forms while honoring the heroine’s developmental journey from Maiden to Crone.
Read the full review at Compulsive Reader.
A finalist for the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, The Daughter of Man follows its unorthodox heroine as she transforms from maiden to warrior—then to queen, maven, and crone—against the backdrop of suburban America from the 1980s to today. In this bold reframing of the hero’s journey, L. J. Sysko serves up biting social commentary and humorous, unsparing self-critique while enlisting an eccentric cast that includes Betsy Ross as sex worker, Dolly Parton as raptor, and a bemused MILF who exchanges glances with a young man at a gas station. Sysko’s revisions of René Magritte’s modernist icon The Son of Man and the paintings of baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, whose extraordinary talent was nearly eclipsed after she took her rapist to trial, loom large in this multifaceted portrait of womanhood. With uncommon force, The Daughter of Man confronts misogyny and violence, even as it bursts with nostalgia, lust, and poignant humor.
L. J. Sysko is the author of the chapbook Battledore. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She lives in Delaware.