The Worried Well by Anthony Immergluck
About the book:
The Worried Well, selected by Eduardo C. Corral as the winner of the 2024 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, is a tragicomic collection that explores the intersection of anxiety and safety in a chaotic world.
Anthony Immergluck balances the thin lines between healing and ailing, between humor and tragedy throughout this exceptional debut poetry collection. Reveling at precipices of imminent disaster while grieving at thresholds of relief, The Worried Well asks, how do we live loving and full lives while being confronted with our mortality? How does language carry us between liminal spaces?
The "worried well" is a
term often used pejoratively by medical professionals to describe a group of
patients who may be lacking visible symptoms but opt for testing and
preventative interventions, who seek treatments for ailments that don't manifest
readily in medical diagnostics. Immergluck unpacks the term by writing in the
spaces where worry and wellness meet.
Despite the profound subjects explored, the collection carries us with a keen sense of humor, grounds us in the everyday, and rises to meet us with unexpected ruptures or sutures of language on each page. Summoning the restless dybbuk of Jewish mythology as well as David and Goliath, navigating hospital rooms, and surviving economic precarity, Immergluck creates a voice that is utterly new and needed in the literary landscape, a voice that reflects, "I don't / know why I told a worry / child not to worry when / surely the trick is to give / the worry a name and then / to call it again and again."
My review:
Immergluck’s collection in The Worried Well consists of 48 poems in two sections, The Worry, The Well. The first section is made of poems of zealous melodrama, some wry and self-aggrandizing, such as Narcissus at the Pharmacy in which the author is concerned about his legacy. The opening piece, “Worry (the Dybbuk),” is a tribute to life today, focusing on worry, worry, worry: I worry that were we to / land on an island without / worry our worries would / starve or worse, survive… In “Deadsong” the author poses 17 short segments of verse about manners of death that range from drastic to fantastic, poignant to manic: crashes, drugs, old and famous, martyrdom, skateboarding…lots of fun with asides; I can hear the stanzas in the voice of Gene Wilder. Likewise, the droll wit of “Social Studies”: “In the end we all become whoever was nice to us when we were fifteen,” I hear in the voice of Billy Collins.
Yet there is a glimmer of hope in these tributes to concern, such as in “Burden of Care” in which the author finds some reversal of dread: But I don’t want to think / about my body anymore. / I want to learn Spanish / for real and for good. / I want to watch all day / for waterbirds / and run to tell my wife.
Included are poems of illness, about surgeons dropping lines, about Hospital Art: And I have learned to love the textiles / donated by the synagogue. I have / made peace with the tulips. Who doesn’t love a poem that combines palliative care, Rachel Maddow, Polaroid, Jello-O, and isthmus in contemplation? Intermingled are poem memories of grandparents – patience with Grandpa at the end of his life as they attempt to navigate the Lord of the Rings, and finding courageous Grandma taking back the life of her son who thought he should enlist in the army at age thirteen; another found letter from an earlier generation.
In the second part, the Well, a collection of memories such as a childhood home, dumpster-diving for a memorable sofa (And you should hear the song it sings / when both our weights are lain upon it.), margaritas in a Nalgene in a tent in the rain…the reader engages with more lyric and rhythmic language; even forgiveness in “Mise En Place”: Because she loves me, / we do not address the / rawness in the center. / She eats it all / and so do I.
Self-reflection is also a major theme of the poetry in this section. The authors shares the raw emotional distress of fatherhood in “Bus Stop”; the worry of being enough, of being able to love a baby.
The Worried Well is a beautiful collection of frayed humanity, of culture, memories, loss and living for the future which will enchant poetry lovers. One of my favorite parts is the dedication, which you’ll have to read for yourself.
About the author: Anthony Immergluck is a poet and
publishing professional with an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from
NYU-Paris. His work has been widely published in journals including Copper
Nickel, Pleiades, Beloit Poetry Review, and TriQuarterly. In his free time,
Anthony is a passionate traveler and hiker. He’s also a multi-instrumentalist
and songwriter when no one is watching. Originally from the Chicago area, he
now lives with his wife and pit bull in Madison, WI. The author states on his
website that 50% proceeds to the ACLU. https://www.immergluckpoetry.com/
