Natalie Marino reviews Record Player Life

Rachel Turney’s poetry collection Record Player Life (the b-side) is striking in its love for the world. The opening poem “The Grid” is exceptional in its portrayal of a city as a collection of seemingly separate boxes inhabited by people that are actually eternally connected. Turney’s admiration for cities is a consistent theme, as seen in the poem “Give Me City,” with imagistic descriptions of the sights and sounds of New York: “I want a nightclub at 3 a.m. that has cigarette butts on the floor/ Beer spilled on my black dress/ Schnitzel under the bridge by the water.” By the end of the collection Turney brilliantly shows the reader how to be unafraid to take the past on their voyage into the future with stunning lines such as “mistakes are like poppies for remembering.” 

Natalie Marino, author of End of Revels