Review: Stephen Sexton, If All the World and Love Were Young
Samantha Trzinski, Contributing Editor
If All the World and Love Were Young, by Stephen Sexton, Wake Forest University Press, 2019. 136 pp., $14.95.
One thing that I have always found strange is the absence of Mario and Luigi’s parents. There are games that feature baby Mario and Luigi, but the two are dropped by a stork, seemingly without human parents. This absence raises countless questions about Mario and Luigi’s lives. What happened to their parents? Are they orphans? I wonder, too, about their mother. Would she be proud of all that they do for the Mushroom Kingdom? Would she fear for their safety and well-being when they confront Bowser? How, in over four decades of games, have we learned seemingly nothing about Mario and Luigi’s parents? While the recent Super Mario Brothers movie explores this family dynamic, it is something that has been widely absent from the video game franchise.
Central to Stephen Sexton’s debut poetry collection If All the World and Love Were Young are ideas of nostalgia and a mother’s love. It considers the loss of childhood innocence and the death of one’s mother and places these considerations against a backdrop of Super Mario World. The collection takes readers on a journey through the Mushroom Kingdom and through Sexton’s childhood as he grows up in the 90s and early 2000s and loses his mother. Perhaps it is this connection between Super Mario World and a mother’s role in her child’s life that makes me think about Mario and Luigi’s parents.
Sexton’s poems are fun yet melancholic, meditative yet direct, childish yet mature, expository yet succinct. It is easy to get lost in a single poem, breaking down its complex imagery and meter. There is little punctuation in the poems, which contributes to their complexity. The minimal punctuation does not have a negative impact on the work. It builds a sense of fast-paced temporality and builds a dream-like world. I found myself drawn to was the lines and phrases repeated across poems. These connections function almost like the bright green pipes in a Super Mario game, transporting the reader seamlessly between two separate ideas. These repeated lines and phrases make the reader feel as though they have found a secret area, and they jump between the poems to uncover any information that they can offer.
A stream-of-consciousness writing style pulls the reader in much like how a video game does. The reader is pulled into the world that Sexton creates. The reader is lulled into a sense of comfort as they imagine Sexton’s vision of Super Mario World but is painfully struck with reality when they arrive at Vanilla Dome and slammed with sorrow at Bowser’s Castle. The division of the book into worlds and individual levels from Super Mario World repeatedly remind the reader of how central the game is to Sexton’s childhood and his poetry.
The collection precedes with a note in which Sexton describes a photograph that his mother took of him playing Super Mario World in 1998 when he was nine. In this photo, his back is to the camera, and the television is positioned in the corner of the room where the wall met the patio door. He describes how he could see the garden, a river, fields, a forest to the left, and the huge television to the right. Because of the camera’s flash, it is impossible to tell which of the levels of Super Mario World he is playing. Perhaps that is why he imagines every level throughout his collection of poetry as he explores his memory of his childhood. This photo described at the beginning of the collection becomes emblematic of Sexton’s childhood – on the precipice of nature and innocence and technology, modernity, and experience. It becomes the catalyst for If All the World and Love Were Young as Sexton imagines each level of Super Mario World and how it depicts key moments from his life.
It is villainous to present these poems in snippets or out of Sexton’s intended order as their progression builds a heartbreaking and devastating story. Instead of doing a disservice to the collection by considering each poem or small aspects of them, I want to look at one poem that I cannot stop thinking about: “Valley of Bowser 3.” I am especially drawn to how ideas in it are revisited in a later poem in the collection.
“It’s so short she says it’s so short it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here
at all and now I have to go. The bluish light is from a lamp.
The portable television we brought from home is standing by.
I won’t get to see what happens to you or your brother she says
as if our lives were determined already along one sure path.
No grandchildren and no first steps and never again a first word.
My first word she says was apple or something something like apple.”
In this poem, Sexton’s mother begins to fear her death. She thinks about how short life has been, she thinks about her children and all that she will miss. The part that is so poignant is this final line, in which she shares her son’s first word. This moment is one of those metaphorical “green pipes” in the collection, that leads to another poem with a shared phrase. In “Larry’s Castle,” the first word of “apple” returns. It concludes with Sexton wondering,
“what kind of story do I tell apple is the longest story
I know let’s see how does it go again apple apple apple.”
Why is “apple” the longest story? Because it was his first word? Because it is what his mother remembered about his infancy? We do not get an answer, but its repetition seems so incredibly important here as his mother’s death approaches.
In Super Mario World, Mario is able to defeat Bowser, but, in this collection, Mario is powerless. No matter what course of action he takes in each level and land, death is unavoidable. It may seem like the content of Sexton’s poetry is incompatible with the joy and optimism of Super Mario World, but that is far from accurate. This juxtaposition of melancholic, meditative poetry and a bright, happy video game demonstrates a loss of childhood innocence. It shows how we approach games that we once loved as children differently in adulthood. The sorrows of Sexton’s life were unavoidable, and they greatly shaped his person. As such, he can never play Super Mario World in the same way that he played it as a child in 1998. It can still provide a sense of comfort and nostalgia, though. It can remind him of his childhood and of his mother.
Wakefield University Press provided a review copy of this book. As usual for GwG, PR played no part in the resulting writing or publication of this review.
