Poetry, Pain, and the Power of Expression in Therese Gleason’s Hemicrania
By Bridget Rexhausen
Therese Gleason’s latest book, Hemicrania (Chestnut Review Chapbooks, 2024), focuses on migraines—deriving its title from a word that, taken from Greek, means “half skull,” something she plays on in this brilliant collection.
Balancing lyrical language with the harsh reality of living with migraines, Gleason’s book begins with straightforward, biographical, narrative poems about the condition, before taking readers on a journey of vampires, global warming, and witchy spells, all of which she uses as metaphors to explore migraines. Gleason’s words manage to convey much more than her physical struggle, and the most notable feature of the book is her ability to connect her pain with her spiritual anguish. As she considers the nature of her condition, readers are prompted to think about the generational effects of maladies like migraines, which is a great strength of this very impressive book.
The collection starts off with one of Gleason’s strongest poems, “Annunciation,” which announces the history of migraine in the speaker’s family. It succeeds in contrasting the biblical story of the angel visiting Mary with the speaker’s eventual recognition that her suffering is not divine intervention, but random. The poem’s final lines are beautifully haunting: “But even with my head exploding, / I know the truth: / I’m no more chosen than I’m god / forsaken.” This line break, placing emphasis on both “god” and “forsaken,” exhibits Gleason’s spiritual anguish and creativity.
While we might think of Mary Szybist’s work Incarnadine as we encounter Gleason’s poem on the Virgin Mary, we may likely also remember the seminal migraine essay, Joan Didion’s “In Bed.” Gleason draws on this essay in her appropriately titled poem, “In Bed.” Ultimately, Gleason speaks to the misunderstanding and stigma Didion grapples with. Didion explores how others minimize migraines, writing, “I simply had migraine headaches, and migraine headaches were, as everyone who did not have them knew, imaginary. I fought migraine then, ignored the warnings it sent, went to school and later to work in spite of it.” Gleason’s speaker echoes this sentiment, describing a lifetime of trying to wish the problem away: “I’ve pushed through for years: lying on my office floor, door closed, / eyes closed, praying the pills work before my hourlong commute.” After these lines, this more essayistic poem includes her realization that her condition cannot be swept under the rug.
Gleason and Didion also cover the treatment of migraine patients by medical professionals. Where Didion’s essay describes the knowns and unknowns of migraines, Gleason’s poem takes it a step further, describing what she senses to be the clean-cut procedural approach to a messy problem. In her view, doctors’ hesitant approach ignores the urgent need for treatment, making the condition both physically taxing as well as mentally.
If Didion’s essay is a cry for understanding, Gleason’s poem is a hand extended in fellowship. When reading both accounts, readers can’t help but notice the way each writer pushes aside their debilitating pain—something that illustrates all-too-well the demanding nature of a society driven by productivity and profit.
As Gleason moves into the metaphorical section of the book, “Photophobia” stands out, drawing on different images—some more fantastical than others—to convey her experience with migraines. The poem begins with “Vampiric, I shun the sun,” and that bold choice of the first word combined with the rhyme grab us by the neck. Throughout, she contrasts gothic images with a more scientific darkness, describing a “pupillary bruise, sonar rippling / to my brain” before seamlessly shifting back to the gothic to explain the brain: “temple, cathedral of pain— / the migraine’s holy see.” The wordplay with “holy see”—both seat of the Catholic Church and imaginative perception—displays Gleason’s dual focus on sight and spirituality.
Shifting between these two images, Gleason then moves to an image that combines both the scientific and the spectral: “In Mammoth Cave / fish glide through the Mystic.” With this, Gleason gives us the image of a blind fish that uses other appendages to guide itself, and we see in this speaker a person who is as blind as this fish, and who suffers the pain of a vampire thrown into the sun. This poem is both heartbreaking and fun, adding elements of the speculative to the anguish that could otherwise threaten to overwhelm the collection.
The remainder of Hemicrania also surprises, with some of the most memorable poems including photos and other multimedia elements. Poems like “Migraine Disability Assessment 1,” which is a formal test document turned blackout poem, and “MRI,” an annotated brain scan, take the procedural language from the documents and lyricize it, acting as a call-back to Gleason’s medical commentary in “In Bed,” and tying the collection together. Overall, her voice is both honest and exhausted, and we get a kind of wit’s-end explosiveness in the poems. This allows readers to feel they understand the person behind the words, and we see, too, her inspiration from confessional poets like Anne Sexton. In her New Ohio Review essay on Sexton, “‘Doing the Undoing Dance’: Anne Sexton’s Brutal—and Brave—Struggle for Agency,” Gleason describes that poet’s perspective as “brutally honest and psychologically astute.” This is the same spirit we find in Hemicrania. Its language will shine in the reader’s mind long after we finish reading.
Bridget Rexhausen is a college student and Cincinnati native. Currently, she is pursuing her B.A. in English Literature at Ohio University. She hopes to become a book editor someday, and writes book reviews and short stories in her spare time.
New Ohio Review 