Daniel Lassell reviews
Nepenthe Radiant
by Aimee Seu

Aimee Seu’s first full-length poetry book, Velvet Hounds, was a delicious wonder of sound and visceral energy, and she continues her talented poetics in this new chapbook, Nepenthe Radiant, in which she delves into the deeply imagistic and imaginative world of youth-driven memory. Take, for example, the second poem in the collection, “Zaire,” which contains these heartbreaking lines:

You were my brother’s
only friend, so your death
is just his. (1)

Seu doesn’t flinch at wrenching details; instead, she leans into the visceral:

[…] We used to love
to tell the myth of you
walking out to the car, your girlfriend
all shredded jeans and liquid hair
yelling, she picked up a 2x4 and swung,
cracked it across the back
of your head. And you were so fucked up
that you stumbled, stood, turned and said, That’s why
you missed, bitch! (1)

Humor—especially dark humor—leads to poignancy in Seu’s poetry. Musicality also courses throughout her chapbook, as illustrated with these lines from “Rich Friend”:

Odd that she gave it away. Odd that I wore it.
We read how Yoko won John’s heart & we began
writing yes all over the walls. Across the dashboard, in the bathroom stalls
        at school. Yes, yes. Our chant. (3)

The poems in Nepenthe Radiant are a party. Everywhere Seu goes, there are wild endeavors, sloshed people, smoking and drinking—such sexual energy in bombastic bodies. An example is in “Ode to Jameson,” which has these lines:

[…] I dab you on the gums of my soul
as it teethes. O slurred philosopher,
distortion flower fed to the oracle
at Delphi […] (5). 

The chapbook starts with a dynamic lobby poem, then is arranged into two parts. The first section seems to circle around personal narratives that involve the unbidden, the forbidden, and the forsaken. In the second section, the chapbook concludes with a long poem, “October,” which to me recalls Louise Glück’s poem of the same title. But Seu’s “October” is stylistically different, though as intensely seeking as Glück’s poem. Where heartbreak and lovesickness overwhelm the speaker. Take, for example, these lines:

A.,
the world didn’t want us to meet
but we did. We will heal. I will find you
like that first night at the screamo show—
your black Skully, dreads down and bleached
gold, thick thermal in late spring. Nodding
and smiling back like we already knew. (20)

Seu’s attentiveness to the worldly and the wild is her talent; she has immersed herself in it wholly. And for that, readers will enjoy this chapbook.

Aimee Seu is the author of Velvet Hounds, winner of the 2020 Akron Poetry Prize. She graduated from the University of Virginia Poetry MFA and was recipient of Academy of American Poetry Prizes at UVA and Temple University. Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Poets, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, BOAAT, Redivider, Raleigh Review, Diode, Leavings, Minnesota Review, among others . She’s currently studying in Florida State University’s Creative Writing PhD program.

Daniel Lassell is the author of two poetry books: Frame Inside a Frame (Texas Review Press, 2025) and Spit(Wheelbarrow Books, 2021), winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. He grew up in Kentucky and lives in Bloomington, Indiana. Visit his website: www.daniel-lassell.com.