And Yet Held by T. De Los Reyes
Reviewed by Noel Quiñones
"The Power of ‘And’"
“The more I try to dig around
language, the closer I am to knowing what words
lack.”
(From “Delicate”)
T. De Los Reyes’ second chapbook And Yet Held (Bull City Press, 2024) sits within the complex balance of experiencing tenderness and defining that tenderness. In this collection words are not just documentation but an embodiment of action and relation. Reyes puts our hand over hers as she (exa)mines the small, subtle moments of living and how the very word ‘and’ links these moments exponentially. The title itself, And Yet Held, is a statement in media res. There is a beginning and an end to this title that we are not privy to until we begin reading. The speaker has experienced the rapture of young love and the hard fought commitment of experienced love, and declares that they are still held despite and will continue to be held. Through intentional simplicity, subtle sentimentality, and an interrogation of tenderness, Reyes’ work is a collection in the truest sense. Each poem feels collected, cherished, and then presented as a keepsake the author wishes to share wholeheartedly.
Reyes’ opening poem “Debris” interrogates our preconceived notions of the word:
a little girl learning
to tap dance over a small puddle, a stranger
opening the door for another stranger, pieces
of coriander warming the taste of broth. Debris
falls with each shuddering breath, and the fissures
of our days murmur their thanks--
Debris is often negatively associated with waste and remains, a scattering after an explosion, but Reyes is asking us to look more closely at the debris of our lives, to bring a different connotation to the word. This poem details small tendernesses labeled as debris, debris that could land on anyone. These fissures are the small moments in our lives–the spices in food, the kindness of strangers, a child experiencing joy–that crack us open and let us experience gratitude for being alive. This opening poem works hand in hand with the title And Yet Held; we are not starting with a speaker learning to appreciate the small moments or a speaker reflecting on those moments; instead we are given the small moments as they are.
Reyes utilizes this immediate and immersive level of presence to great effect throughout the collection as the reader finds beautifully simple debris sprinkled across several poems. Here are some of my favorite moments from the collection that celebrate the beauty of the quotidian: “And when I grabbed groceries from a stranger / and carried them two whole blocks to the car / thinking he was my father,” “and I forgot the spring / onions. My sister came bursting in, out of breath, / then threw a battered brown bag at me before / rushing out, saving my life,”, “and the shop owner who called a cab / when [I] got lost somewhere in town.” Each begins with the word “and,” displaying the power of continuation and accumulation, using this conjunction to imply that, because the debris of the everyday falls on all of us, we are all inextricably linked to each other.
Nowhere is this theme of connectedness made clearer than in Reyes’ “Valse Sentimentale,” which takes its name from Russian composer Pyotr IIyich Tchaikovsky’s musical piece. In this work, his use of chord progression introduces an unexplained note in the beginning of the song and then uses the chord’s journey toward resolution as the driving force to move to the next section. Similarly, Reyes’ poem begins each line with “and,” using this word as the driving force of each line:
and then you
and my hand
and the parting crowd
and hyacinths
and dreaming trees
and feast of clouds
and spinning
and coming back
and laughter
[ ]
and breathless plea
and then your lips
and me
While a seemingly simple poem on its surface, Reyes uses the word “and,” short tercets, and a reference to Tchaikovsky to showcase the power of mundanity, how the smallest moments bind us together. “And”—a small word readers so often skip over, dismissing its power—is given centerstage as a guiding force for interconnection.
In multiple poems, Reyes explores the inability of language to convey what her speaker is experiencing: from “If I am quite incoherent, please forgive me” to “[I] was suddenly struck by every / little thing I have failed to tell you” to “I wanted / to shake loose the bodega for words that would mean.” Taken at face value, it would be easy to assume Reyes is running up against a wall, choosing to do the best she can by documenting these small moments in the face of the gargantuan challenge of documentation. Yet, in a powerful inversion, Reyes chooses to belittle the challenge and make the small moments huge.
Reyes breaks the fourth wall and writes about writing in two key poems—one about a leaf the speaker’s lover finds in their pocket and the other about a partner showing off a bug bite. In “Leaf,” Reyes writes, “[M]ight be I seldom / write about mysterious things / instead choosing moons and / fried eggs and your skin,” and in “Turning in Early,” explains, “[T]he night is heavy with what we / cannot name,— / Need I abandon my own / task to describe our life. Need I let words fail.” Both poems highlight how sometimes the act of writing can overshadow the essence of what we are writing about. Yet, in saying it plainly, Reyes doubles down, making the challenge of writing a silly little endeavor in the face of the much larger concerns of a lover’s skin and fried eggs. In undercutting the daunting challenge of using words to describe lived experience, Reyes allows the small moments to live on their own merits, suddenly striking in their enormity.
And Yet Held is as much an examination of tendernesses as it is of language as a tool to speak on such tenderness. Across this collection, Reyes’ focused simplicity shines as she inverts our expectations of the quotidian. By centering the often dismissed word ‘and,’ we are invited to examine our everyday lives more closely. And in that examination, the reader realizes that “I fell in love / with wonderment and have become [ ] transparent.” Through her guiding hand, the simplicity of our lives becomes clearer and we are able to cherish our tendernesses a little more than before.
“The more I try to dig around
language, the closer I am to knowing what words
lack.”
(From “Delicate”)
T. De Los Reyes’ second chapbook And Yet Held (Bull City Press, 2024) sits within the complex balance of experiencing tenderness and defining that tenderness. In this collection words are not just documentation but an embodiment of action and relation. Reyes puts our hand over hers as she (exa)mines the small, subtle moments of living and how the very word ‘and’ links these moments exponentially. The title itself, And Yet Held, is a statement in media res. There is a beginning and an end to this title that we are not privy to until we begin reading. The speaker has experienced the rapture of young love and the hard fought commitment of experienced love, and declares that they are still held despite and will continue to be held. Through intentional simplicity, subtle sentimentality, and an interrogation of tenderness, Reyes’ work is a collection in the truest sense. Each poem feels collected, cherished, and then presented as a keepsake the author wishes to share wholeheartedly.
Reyes’ opening poem “Debris” interrogates our preconceived notions of the word:
a little girl learning
to tap dance over a small puddle, a stranger
opening the door for another stranger, pieces
of coriander warming the taste of broth. Debris
falls with each shuddering breath, and the fissures
of our days murmur their thanks--
Debris is often negatively associated with waste and remains, a scattering after an explosion, but Reyes is asking us to look more closely at the debris of our lives, to bring a different connotation to the word. This poem details small tendernesses labeled as debris, debris that could land on anyone. These fissures are the small moments in our lives–the spices in food, the kindness of strangers, a child experiencing joy–that crack us open and let us experience gratitude for being alive. This opening poem works hand in hand with the title And Yet Held; we are not starting with a speaker learning to appreciate the small moments or a speaker reflecting on those moments; instead we are given the small moments as they are.
Reyes utilizes this immediate and immersive level of presence to great effect throughout the collection as the reader finds beautifully simple debris sprinkled across several poems. Here are some of my favorite moments from the collection that celebrate the beauty of the quotidian: “And when I grabbed groceries from a stranger / and carried them two whole blocks to the car / thinking he was my father,” “and I forgot the spring / onions. My sister came bursting in, out of breath, / then threw a battered brown bag at me before / rushing out, saving my life,”, “and the shop owner who called a cab / when [I] got lost somewhere in town.” Each begins with the word “and,” displaying the power of continuation and accumulation, using this conjunction to imply that, because the debris of the everyday falls on all of us, we are all inextricably linked to each other.
Nowhere is this theme of connectedness made clearer than in Reyes’ “Valse Sentimentale,” which takes its name from Russian composer Pyotr IIyich Tchaikovsky’s musical piece. In this work, his use of chord progression introduces an unexplained note in the beginning of the song and then uses the chord’s journey toward resolution as the driving force to move to the next section. Similarly, Reyes’ poem begins each line with “and,” using this word as the driving force of each line:
and then you
and my hand
and the parting crowd
and hyacinths
and dreaming trees
and feast of clouds
and spinning
and coming back
and laughter
[ ]
and breathless plea
and then your lips
and me
While a seemingly simple poem on its surface, Reyes uses the word “and,” short tercets, and a reference to Tchaikovsky to showcase the power of mundanity, how the smallest moments bind us together. “And”—a small word readers so often skip over, dismissing its power—is given centerstage as a guiding force for interconnection.
In multiple poems, Reyes explores the inability of language to convey what her speaker is experiencing: from “If I am quite incoherent, please forgive me” to “[I] was suddenly struck by every / little thing I have failed to tell you” to “I wanted / to shake loose the bodega for words that would mean.” Taken at face value, it would be easy to assume Reyes is running up against a wall, choosing to do the best she can by documenting these small moments in the face of the gargantuan challenge of documentation. Yet, in a powerful inversion, Reyes chooses to belittle the challenge and make the small moments huge.
Reyes breaks the fourth wall and writes about writing in two key poems—one about a leaf the speaker’s lover finds in their pocket and the other about a partner showing off a bug bite. In “Leaf,” Reyes writes, “[M]ight be I seldom / write about mysterious things / instead choosing moons and / fried eggs and your skin,” and in “Turning in Early,” explains, “[T]he night is heavy with what we / cannot name,— / Need I abandon my own / task to describe our life. Need I let words fail.” Both poems highlight how sometimes the act of writing can overshadow the essence of what we are writing about. Yet, in saying it plainly, Reyes doubles down, making the challenge of writing a silly little endeavor in the face of the much larger concerns of a lover’s skin and fried eggs. In undercutting the daunting challenge of using words to describe lived experience, Reyes allows the small moments to live on their own merits, suddenly striking in their enormity.
And Yet Held is as much an examination of tendernesses as it is of language as a tool to speak on such tenderness. Across this collection, Reyes’ focused simplicity shines as she inverts our expectations of the quotidian. By centering the often dismissed word ‘and,’ we are invited to examine our everyday lives more closely. And in that examination, the reader realizes that “I fell in love / with wonderment and have become [ ] transparent.” Through her guiding hand, the simplicity of our lives becomes clearer and we are able to cherish our tendernesses a little more than before.
Noel Quiñones is a Puerto Rican writer, performer, educator, and community organizer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from Poets House, the Poetry Foundation, CantoMundo, Candor Arts, and SAFTA (Sundress Academy for the Arts). His work has been published in POETRY, Green Mountains Review, the Latin American Review, Kweli Journal, and elsewhere. He is the founder and former director of Project X, a Bronx-based arts organization, and a current M.F.A. candidate in poetry at the University of Mississippi. Follow him at noelpquinones.com or online @noelpquinones.