Barrelhouse Reviews: Law of the Letter by Elizabeth Galoozis

Reviewed by CD Eskilson

Inlandia Institute / April 2025 / 80 pp

Elizabeth Galoozis skillfully interrogates the shortcomings of words throughout her debut collection Law of the Letter, which won Inlandia Institute’s 2023 Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Galoozis explores the disconnect between the methodical organizing of words and the reality of an uncertain world. In a present filled with climate disaster, pandemic, and technological overreach, Galoozis’ carefully measured lines assert that our survival will come in part through a new, daring vision of shared creation.

From the start, Law of the Letter contends with the complex comfort language offers despite external violence. The title poem, which opens the collection, reveals the calm found in alphabetizing portions of the phonebook as a child, noting that “Letters have always soothed me when / my parents couldn’t.” The poem’s effortless use of the abecedarian form highlights the revelation possible through mining and cataloging language while also pointing back toward its own constraint. Indexing offers solace amidst a chaotic family dynamic, but also burdens the speaker. Galoozis eventually finds reconciliation by freeing her speaker from the obligation of having to complete the form’s final line:  

…X, A-Z. There are sentences I can write now:
You don’t have to win the spelling bee. You didn’t deserve to be yelled at. You
         don’t have to finish the list.

Other received forms paint words as communal objects in a shared act of meaning-making. In “Cento: Six Women in Five Parts,” Galoozis showcases the opportunity for connection in lines by other queer woman poets: Elizabeth Bishop, June Jordan, Gloria Anzaldúa. She reconstitutes the already-charged lines into a new poetic series meditating on queer love and loss:

I have known
all along that
words will not do.
These words
they are stones in the water
running away.

While navigating heartache, Galoozis points to the kinship and joy possible through inherited language. By building a shared art, poets may reach beyond the scarcity paradigm of owned or original words. Wielding the voices of those before her, Galoozis ends the poem with a powerful resolution:

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

Other art forms and media similarly inspire poems throughout Law of the Letter. References to other art forms so often enable artists to articulate that which otherwise feels indescribable. For instance, Lennon and McCartney lyrics guide a frank exploration of depression while sleepily binge-watching Friends; this mash-up leads to a rumination on the pop culture elements of homophobia. Meanwhile, in “In the Rothko Chapel,” stanzas bounce across the margins to create a kinetic, highly visual experience that homages the artist’s “wordless walls of color.” This dynamic presentation implies Galoozis’ writing has run up against an unseen boundary: the limits of a poet’s medium. She holds space for that which language cannot neatly capture:

I thought I knew
I only loved
what could be described.
Then I knew
I loved
Rothko.
No less beautiful
because I couldn’t explain.

Ultimately, Law of the Letter asserts that the liminal space our language occupies is ruled less by uncertainty than by potential, and by sheer possibility. By acknowledging this complex interplay between words’ power and their limits, we might create space for what we need in the world. Through these honest and compassionate poems, Galoozis reminds us that, together, remaking the world is possible. We can aspire towards a future that affirms our shared humanity, offers tenderness, and ensures our survival. That, as the final poem, “mutual aid,” notes:

[We will] hold each other’s hands
and say,
we’re
here
now.

CD Eskilson is a trans nonbinary poet, editor, and literary translator. They are poetry co-editor of Split Lip Magazine and their work appears in Kenyon Review, The Offing, Cincinnati Review, Passages North, and others. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize and the Lily Peter Fellowship in Translation at the University of Arkansas, among other honors. CD's debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books.