Jennifer Franklin’s If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, 2023) is a stunning poetry collection that combines persona poems, modern sonnets, and prose poems.
Each form recurs in a loose cycle, drawing readers back to the themes of the book and creating a sense of inevitability—a reflection of how life’s struggles often return in waves.
Antigone reimagined: Persona poems that resonate
The persona poems, all titled “As Antigone,” intertwine Franklin’s contemporary life with the ancient Greek tragedy. Antigone’s story—a daughter defying a king to honor her brother’s memory—becomes a powerful lens through which Franklin explores modern themes: choice, motherhood, and resistance.
In these poems, Franklin’s speaker reflects on a difficult pregnancy, her love for her disabled daughter, and her battles with authority figures. The connection to Antigone amplifies the emotional stakes. For example, “Now that I love my daughter,/there is no way out. Not even if I tie/my own dress around my neck” echoes both Antigone’s entombment and the speaker’s sense of being trapped by love and responsibility.
Hearing Franklin discuss these poems as a guest author at a workshop was illuminating. She explained how the persona of Antigone allowed her to hold deeply personal material at arm’s length. This distance gave her the clarity to shape raw emotions into powerful poetry.
It made me wonder: which characters from literature or mythology could I use to process my own stories?
Grappling with mortality: The “Memento Mori” sonnets
The sonnets in the collection, titled “Memento Mori,” explore death’s inescapability—not just the death of people but also the extinction of love, art, and even species. These poems don’t shy away from hard truths. Instead, they ask: how do we live in the face of impermanence?
These poems don’t shy away from hard truths. Instead, they ask: how do we live in the face of impermanence?
One of my favorite sonnets, “Memento Mori: Red First, Always,” captures this beautifully: “Love, one of us is always leaving.” The form itself—fourteen lines—becomes a container, holding the complexity of grief and love within its constraints.
It’s made me think about how I might use a repetitive form like a pantoum or villanelle to explore a single theme in my writing.
The power of prose poems: Personal meets political
Franklin’s prose poems are another standout, each titled with a month of the year. They weave personal history with current events, from the repeal of Roe v. Wade to the traumas of motherhood. These pieces feel immediate and raw, like diary entries elevated to art.
In “June 24, 2022,” Franklin writes about her daughter’s seizures and the loss of reproductive rights: “My daughter crumbles like a rag doll when she seizes…I watch as from above, our forced and permanent Pietá.”
This blending of the personal and the political is something Franklin admitted she hadn’t planned for. But the events of recent years demanded a response—a lesson I’ve taken to heart.
It’s encouraged me to think about how my own life intersects with the world’s larger struggles.
My takeaways as a writer
Reading and listening to Franklin has challenged me in the best way. She’s inspired me to:
Identify characters or figures I’m drawn to and explore why they resonate with me.
Experiment with forms that repeat, like sonnets or villanelles, to deepen my exploration of a theme.
Pay closer attention to the world outside my writing—current events, art, history—and consider how these threads connect to my personal experiences.
Franklin’s ultimate message, as I see it, is about love and connection.
Her poetry reminds us of the beauty in even the heaviest moments. As she writes in “Memento Mori: Northern White Rhinos”: “Love,/what do any of us have but this?”
Final thoughts
If you haven’t read If Some God Shakes Your House, I can’t recommend it enough. Franklin’s work is a masterclass in using poetry to grapple with life’s biggest questions—and a reminder of how art can hold space for both personal and universal truths.
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Happy reading and writing!
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