Observation is a deliberate act, enforcing a new context to the actions of the person who is being observed. We cannot control what we see of other people, nor can we relinquish the power of observation without ridding ourselves of the sense that we use to navigate the world. Most people will, knowingly or not, observe someone during a moment where they believe they have total privacy. This changes the nature of that moment, regardless of how either party reacts. Margo Berdeshevsky plucks at these tenuous divisions between isolation and intimacy in her latest collection, It Is Still Beautiful to Hear the Heart Beat. Composed of lyrical poetry, narrative vignettes, and philosophical reflections, this collection explores systemic violence as a force and an action. The magnitude of its implementation renders such cruelty to a state akin to the divine, a veneer punctuated by flesh and blood. 

 Visceral reality is inescapable with Berdeshevsky’s vivid prose. Over the course of the collection’s four acts, you walk the razor’s edge between wonder and despair, realising how tenuous our existence is in the face of global interest. Poems such as ‘Postcards to the Body Politic’ explore the dichotomy between our tangible ability to affect the world around us and our limited ability to change the course of history. 

“If a body meet a body. Where the body of the state falls. Or, because what not-to-
be-trusted gods—refuse to fall.           . . . twirling on the horse, blowing kisses
indefinitely into the grey future, and if this entertainment were to continue. Body”

So, we are left with the aftermath, the states of healing and decay that follow in the wake of suffering. The collection does not follow a linear path, ebbing and flowing, much like scar tissue or the news cycle. We move between action and aftermath, the innermost thought and political consensus. Berdeshevsky’s fluid prose adapts itself to each perspective, using the contrast between simple and lyrical language. These distinct approaches are reflected in the simplicity of poems such as ‘Cain—After—And After’. In the aftermath of his brother’s death, Cain makes sense of the new existence he has created with his acts of violence, even as he recognises the discrepancy in control when compared to the divine being that instigated the conflict. Vulnerability and grief seep through the bareness of his words, belied by the pause of a person reconsidering their instincts with every word.

“I—who never killed,  but pulled a root from the good 
brown soil—learned from you who loved blood,   better.”

When compared with ‘After Forgetting How’, a poem that considers the background noise of a physical and political landscape, we see a much more intricate use of language, emulating both the complexity of the information radiating through every living moment and the perceived distance from the rest of the world. 

“enough to trust. True believers. Sun swords through. And the din of protest like
birds that announce both storm and wings with their hundred damaged eyes—”

Our ability to act is questioned but not ceded.  It Is Still Beautiful to Hear the Heart Beat is actively in conversation with itself, intertwining and challenging each piece with equal conviction. The nuance brought forth in each poem invites the reader to bring their own experiences to their understanding of power. How we can be both perpetrator and victim, unaware of our place in the suffering of others, without empathy and critical thought? The duality of personal experiences and how these patterns repeat themselves on an international scale is a highlight in the formatting of this collection. By placing poems such as ‘Chorus of One’ alongside ‘Those Are The Pearls That Were His Eyes. Look! *’ Berdeshevsky considers how imbalances of power enact themselves upon the individual and the community, how those states of violence are inseparable as a force of dehumanisation. By committing an act of violence, one has classed a subset of human beings to be acceptable targets for this, and future acts. 

“I am despondent, she whispers.
My culture died, and no one came to the funeral.
“Reorder the page of names, Sequence revered and Replaced”

Coming away from this collection, I believe that Berdeshevsky has given equal weight to reality and possibility. Her work is marked by nuance and an appreciation for beauty in the face of pain.