Book Review :: Stedfast by Ali Blythe

Review by Jami Macarty

In Stedfast, his third collection of poetry, Ali Blythe responds to John Keats’s last sonnet, which opens with the line: “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—” As if cutting a key from the past, Blythe disassembles Keats’s poem, by a full line, half line, or word at a time, then reassembles it across the titles of Stedfast’s poems. For instance, the first three poems in Stedfast are titled “Bright Star,” “Would I were stedfast,” and “As thou art.”

The poems of Stedfast are love poems in the romantic tradition, delivered in couplets and by “lyric address” from a speaker who whispers “disquieting thoughts” to a lover “asleep.” “And so on down the page” the “export is memory,” “the same old stories” by a “ghostwriter.” Via “astral projection” and “delicate revolutions,” Blythe reconceives and transforms Keats’s single sonnet into a book-length nocturne.

Taking place over “one night,” the collection meditates on the idea of steadfastness in romantic relationships, and by extension, in romantic poetry. As “one myth” dissolves “within / another, risking / our own nihility,” the poet grapples with the tension between “allusions” and illusions, illusions and reality, a romantic past and a fragile future.

In Stedfast, Ali Blythe’s poems constitute a “path / of devotion” to other and poetry, and they “seize what shines.”

Stedfast by Ali Blythe. icehouse poetry, September 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.