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Author: Janet Holmes

ISBN: 0-268-030766

Janet Holmes’s fourth poetry collection, F2F, explores how people communicate and how the loss of sight results in isolation. Holmes, who once worked in software development, bridges the language of technology with the language of poetry. As much as technology and fame can shed light, it can also result in other forms of misperception. Ultimately, it is the loss of sight that affects the relationships between people whether it’s Emily Dickinson’s life and image or the relationship between a writer and their reader. 

The title of Holmes’s collection means, quite literally, “face to face.” Though “f2f” is used to signal the desire to meet in real life, the people asking for this meeting are alone in front of their computer. This disconnection plays an integral role in many of the book’s poems. Holmes’s speakers search for relationships online, but the absence of sight furthers their isolation and disconnection to the world around them.  In her poem “List,” Holmes discusses the disconnection between people and how they use this new language of technology. She writes: 

                        Saying writing

                        You are the only one I can talk to

                        Hearing reading

                        And you are the only one I can talk to

                        You are not giggling under the tablecloth you are two adults sitting

                        at expensive computers touch-typing (oh! yes)

Here, language is disconnected from its original meaning: two people “touch-type” on computers and “talk” in the hopes of connecting with someone and yet, ultimately, they are both alone at their keyboards. The walls of communication have both opened and closed: when people communicate through the Internet, they are “f2f,” but what they are face-to-face with a computer screen.  

Holmes’s poems discuss the writer’s attempt to “communicate” with their reader, a relationship that exists just as much in isolation as the aforementioned chat room lovers. For example, in her poem, “Ars Poetica,” Holmes writes that “we don’t share the field / until I fill it / till it / fulfill it / my not seeing you doesn’t keep me / from loving you, Reader / (yes, you).”  Though the reader and the writer can not see one another, there is still a relationship. Later, in her poem, “To the Reader,” Holmes acknowledges that as much as the writer is speaking or talking to the reader, it is the latter who finishes the conversation. As much as the reader-writer relationship is a conversation, it is not “f2f,” but one experienced alone.

Similarly, the poems that discuss Emily Dickinson deal with sight and the relationship she had with the world. Dickinson was a recluse, someone ignored during her own lifetime, and allegedly isolated by mental illness. Holmes mentions this isolation in the poem, “Disguised,” and writes: “flittering / each a camouflage / E selfcaged –.” Dickinson’s poems are the link to her world; past the “camouflage” of image, her poems provide the space for the public to connect or communicate with her. Poetry becomes another mode of communication for the isolated.

The common ground between all of these poems is the search for connection and how the loss of sight can create disconnection. Here, not only language is renewed through another medium, but so is the idea of connection. The “self-caged” reach out and whether it’s through writing a poem or sending an instant message, they seek to communicate with the world around them. Ultimately, it is the loss of sight that cages the reader and the writer from one another. Ultimately, it is the common ground of words that allow people to connect, even if they have to “touch type” or decipher a writer’s “camouflage.”

The above review was contributed by:  Lisa Bower. Lisa's work has appeared or is forthcoming from The Southern Review, Subtropics, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, Poetry Southeast, The Hollins Critic, The Florida Review, and The Mississippi Review. She is allergic to many things, including tuna (chicken of the sea) and chicken (yes, really). A recent graduate of Hollins University, Lisa currently resides in Roanoke, Virginia.

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