H.K. Hummel’s Lessons in Breathing Underwater lucidly examines personal catastrophe by presenting it side by side with artifacts from natural history, art, and objects of wonder. Drawing on elements of domestic fabulism and anesthetic hallucination, she maps the blurry territory of trauma. Memories of her own childhood off the coast of California help her make sense of the oceanic feelings surrounding recovery and motherhood. “We spend whole lifetimes getting unlost and unlost and unlost,” she says. Hummel asks about the difficult barters we make to live open and loving lives, and a chorus of historical and mythological women respond with a collective song of survival.
“H.K. Hummel’s Lessons in Breathing Underwater offers us a journey into the lyrical interiority of a life, with the body’s failure as a catalyst for discovery. Here, ‘a ghost orchid trembles’ and ‘finches, then river water, glint/ beyond the scrim of/ song and neon.’ Within this lovely and nuanced palette of language, Hummel recognizes that ‘[o]ur imaginations fail us.’ And yet, these poems praise ‘each muscle, each act of tenderness.’ They recover and celebrate—side-by-side with pain and disaster and near-death experiences—joy.”
—Brian Turner