“All is the Telling” by Rosa Castellano

All is the Telling (Diode Editions, 4/5/25) is a memoir in poems. That’s what made me want to read and review it. But when I opened the book and began to read I understood why so many memoir instructors and instructions suggest that all writers should read poetry—for the language.

The language throughout this book is clear and beautiful. I subscribe to Poem-A-Day in an effort to give myself a chance to do what I know I should, like taking a vitamin or drinking enough water. Most days I am a disappointment. Too often they are so esoteric I cannot follow. A soundbite these days is about seven seconds. I try to give the daily poem a bit longer than that, but my performance is spotty, if occasional.

But this book is special. It’s divided into six sections with varying numbers of poems in each. The book weaves the twin worlds of a Black woman today embedded in a history that is hers, but not of her making. Black history. Family history. Our history. I am not Black but I could feel the author sorting her way through her life and those that came before. At some point most of us get to that self-reflection, and the best writers take us along on their journey.

In the first poem we are given this:

The 6-year old girl

Doesn’t understand

At first, that the zip-tie

placed around her wrists

is handcuffs. Her shoulders,

the width of a man’s hand

wing as she walks

a hallway past those

who don’t see love laid

in the neat lines of her braids. At the door

to her school, the squad car

flashes and her cry

breaks—

We can see that little girl, previous news stories stick in our mind but even if they didn’t these words create the scene clearly for us.

The last poem is equally revealing:

& Let me Hold

This space, this page

Ready

for one last thing that must be said

again (& again)

No matter the shit you get into or out of…

The author plays with space and mostly it works but not always. Still, she takes us on her sense-making journey. This book is special. It’s a memoir in poems but it’s also time travel and movement, it’s life captured on the page. One life in poems.

Rosa Castellano

Originally from Tampa, Fl, Rosa Castellano is a poet and teacher living in Richmond, VA. A finalist for Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and co-founder of the RVA Poetry Fest, her work can be found or is forth coming from RHINO Poetry, Diode, Passages North, Nimrod, The Ninth Letter, and Poetry Northwest among others.