Book Review: Black Holes + Gypsy Hearts are Forever

black holes + gypsy hearts are forever, Damiana Andonova, Monee, IL, Honeybees for Peace Press, 2023, Paperback, 55 pages 

Reviewed by Matthew Schnur

Four quarks and an antiquark form a man-made subatomic particle called a pentaquark. Scientists do not believe they occur naturally, but studying them helps us better understand the composition of ordinary matter, such as the protons and neutrons that make us up. It is crucial to understand this thread which ties the collection together. 

Through this analytical lens, Damiana Andonova begins her fine collections of poems. The book comprises four sections; Love in Pentaquarks, Laws of Attraction, The Pain of Distance, and On the Gravity of Love.  

While the lead into the first section, “…Love, like truth, must be must be examined unto it’s innermost parts,” may cause readers to suspect a cold analytical distance in the verse that follows, the opposite is true. The analysis is intimate and close.  

This line in the section’s last poem, “Edgedness,” shows the closeness and intimacy inherent in the poems of this first section.  

In bed while you were sleeping… 

I caressed your hair 

And kissed your back 

And held on to you with all my life… 

 We are there, witness to the softness, the intimacy of love. There is no distance here; the reader is witness, and the analysis is simple, clear, passionate. The one exclusion to this level of closeness is the opening poem of the book, “The Aubergine Sky.” It has a skyscraper’s distance from life, from love, from intimacy, and after reading the other poems in this section, it felt out of place.  

“Laws of Attraction,” the second section begins, “The laws of attraction are illogical and primal.” They are, it seems and best exemplified by this line from the poem “Mamihlapinatapai”: 

 Curious hearts forge brave souls 

That a girl would ask a boy anything at all 

And the most practical of men become children for a girl’s glance, a faint smile… 

This passage evokes memories of that junior high school age where children discover attraction to each other in ways beyond friendship. This continues into adulthood, manifesting as the excitement of first meetings and the thrilling rush of mutual attraction. The other poems in the section feel a bit more out of place to the reader. “Endless forms most beautiful” describes parental and societal expectations well. The poems here clearly show that women bear this weight but feel out of place. It didn’t give the sense of the “illogical” or “primal” parts of attraction. An excellent poem for a different collection, perhaps?  

 The Pain of Distance, the third section of poems, the theme of absence, is the thread which runs through these poems. Andonova delivers some of her best work in this section. In the poem, “Tu beme/You were,” this is clearly visible. 

   The reasons why I miss you 

   Have nothing to do with you… 

This is a killer line showing clear absence, longing, and pain, simple, elegant, and without the sappiness or ham-handedness that can sometimes plague poems of anguish and absence. 

The poem “Excerpts” from “Letters to not send”— a found poem, again delivers the soul shattering feeling of absence: 

I have breathed 30 million breaths since I saw you, and it kills me to keep counting. 

What else to do when plagued by absence but count the one thing that is constant: breath. Anyone who has lost a love knows exactly this feeling—so well captured with concision and clarity. 

The last section, “On the Gravity of Love,” includes the collection’s namesake poem, which concludes this wonderful collection. “Black holes + gypsy hearts are forever” captures well the double meaning of gravity: 

   They say the largest black holes used to shine the brightest… 

   How bright I must have shined for you 

   If all you see is darkness 

The gravity of a black hole pulls in all nearby stars and matter, a force so powerful that light itself cannot escape. Yet a black hole will put on an extraordinary fireworks show in its ultimate moments, like love.  

This collection reminds the reviewers of Allen Ginsberg’s line in his poem, Song, “The weight of the world is love.” Andonova’s entire collection carries that weight well, with big shoulders.