Make Love to Rage by Morgan Robyn Collado

“The Ceiba Tree” sets the tone and illustrates the simple, forceful poetic elements that will remain in each of Collado’s following poems - a reality that may make this collection feel repetitive to some (save, it should be noted, a shift to a somewhat lighter tone during the final, shorter “Love” section), but which, at least for this reader, worked to build emotional momentum. This is a tentative, skillful balance that Collado wants us to see is disproportionately foisted not just on women as a monolithic group, but on women of color and working class women in particular. Yet, one must also keep in mind to not self-destruct, for future generations await, and they need strong roots. One must go “insane”–which, for women, often means simply expressing their anger or refusing to be silent - to cope with systematic erasure. Ultimately, the tree shares that “insanity is the only appropriate response to genocide / but the Sun Still Rises.” This wise-woman voice reverberates throughout the rest of the book, and Her message is clearly heeded. In the collection’s first poem, “The Ceiba Tree,” the female speaker talks to a Mother Tree about Her centuries–old memories of colonization and slavery. Her fiery, cutting, damning poetry is both an observation on how generations of colonized peoples have remained alive and resistant, and an illustration of how storytelling is integral to this process. Trans, working-class, femme Columbian-Puerto Rican poet Morgan Robyn Collado splits her debut collection, Make Love to Rage, into these three sections that, when read alongside the book’s title, prompt essential questions: How does one “make love to rage,” how does one embrace their righteous furor at the injustices of the world and turn it something new, rather than simply explode or burn out? And how can we imagine “rage making love”–anger begetting healing?Ĭollado’s poetry works to answer these questions and, in and of itself, is part of the answers to these questions.

Make Love to Rage by Morgan Robyn Collado