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Encounters for the Living and the Dead Book Review
Encounters for the Living and the Dead Book Review
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Jameela F. Dallis’s 2025 collection Encounters for the Living and the Dead, published by River River Books, begins with a dedication to herself: “for my past and future selves.” It makes sense then that the collection reads so beautifully as a love letter that spans all of time. A love letter to Dallis herself, to family members, to writers, artists, inspirations, Victorian abolitionists, “the beings we love.” The majority of the collection’s poems begin with dedications, including those referenced above; when closely examined, these dedications highlight the collection’s interest in those that come before us, those we meet along the way, and those that stand with us in the present. Dallis’s fascination with other writers and thinkers certainly informs her work, allowing her to settle expertly into a variety of forms and traditions, explore a plethora of conditions, and seemingly travel throughout time in her poems.
But beyond all the people Dallis dedicates her poems to, Encounters for the Living and the Dead radiates with Dallis’s love of poetry as an art. The attention to form, intensity of imagery, and evident research inside the collection are astounding; the construction of these elements shows the intense passion and professionalism behind Dallis’s work. Of the collection’s strengths, it was the imagery which stood out to me the most, in particular, the presence of motifs which repeat across multiple poems.
Aromatic language is one of the most powerful motifs in the collection. It is represented in color choices (the clever use of lavender and lilac over other hues, invoking a floral sense memory), references to several spices and dishes throughout, and consistent attention to sensory experiences, especially tastes and scents. In its variety, the aromatic and flavorful undertones of the collection anchor the book as a complete work, yet Dennis is able to focus the motif even more in order to construct deliberate sections and arcs within the full collection. She does so through repetitive imagery.
One instance in which Dallis effectively uses a repeated individual image can be found in the oyster, an image that is repeated across several poems in the collection’s second section. As Dallis mentions in the collection’s notes, the oyster relates to a real experience of hers; however, even without the context the note provides, Dallis’s multifaceted implementation of the oyster image—and more broadly seafood imagery—reveals the section’s story all on its own. Beginning with “The Imprint,” Dallis introduces at the poem’s end the phrase “once-fat oysters,” subtly setting up the image’s eventual decay through temporal language. With just the word “once,” the phrase tells the reader to expect the oyster to wither, to waste.
At first a rich, luxurious fascination, by the time the reader reaches “The Shape of Love,” the oyster has become a sign of the story’s vicious and poisonous threat:
“You, well-positioned oyster knife
Me, hiding beneath my spiny shell”
The poem before, “Bad Oyster,” expertly shifts the oyster to be the threat itself:
“Suddenly the stench of shit and
the bad oyster beautiful and unassuming until
you gulp it down second-guessing the dog shit that
must be sandwiched between your foot and bar rail.”
In all three poems, as well as those surrounding them, the oyster image carries the weight of the poems’ conflict, creating subtle emotion, while still allowing Dallis’s voice to take center stage.
Afterall, what truly made the collection’s repeated image shine to me was its subtlety. Undertones, images, and evolving relationships unite the poems, give the collection its resonance and structure, haunt the progression with a natural, flavorful, and aromatic trail, but also give way to the speaker’s journey, thoughts, and perspective. The collection feels perfectly like one cohesive narrative without ever sacrificing the impact and singularity of a given poem. As a result, each reading of the book invites the reader to focus in a different place and enables a new unearthing of context and complexity. With each return, reading Encounters for the Living and the Dead welcomes the reader to read the collection over and over again, examining the world within just as Dallis suggests to in the collection’s dedication: for past and future selves.
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