Leah Umansky’s Of Tyrant is a searing exploration of the fracturing of contemporary American
life. Umansky navigates personal and political landscapes with linguistic dexterity and a bold,
declarative voice, carving out a space where rage and resilience coexist. In its formal
experimentation and thematic urgency Of Tyrant is a rallying cry for those who refuse to be
silenced.
Of Tyrant harkens to the naming system in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, where the
speaker is “of” or belonging to the tyrant in all his power-seeking guises. However, Umansky’s
speaker actively resists being wholly “of” the tyrant, seeking to dismantle and reforge instead.
Umansky’s fragmented, fire-lit lines and use of repetition enact the disorientation of a world
seemingly gone mad. Her poems oscillate between lyric meditation and declarative protest,
creating a sense of urgency that refuses complacency.
It is that defiant ethos of the collection, declared in the titular poem “Of Tyrant”: “I fetch the rage
/ in chaos, / in the heel of this butchering.” A meditation on power and resistance, the poem
contains a fragmented syntax to convey a rippling emotional turmoil (“I / I / I / I / can’t sink this rage
/ it stills / it stills / it stills itself into flame”). The use of repetition (“to to / to cowering / to fowl /
to flight”) further enacts the stuttering, obsessive nature of rage and power. The tyrant is
destructive and mesmerizing: “ He is an open fire.” The emotional toll of it all makes even
fidelity unsustainable: “who needs loyalty / when all is pounded / into fatigue.” Here, Umansky
situates the speaker within her critiques of postmodern architectures of power.
In this selfsame mode, “I Threw in an Extra Fuck” confronts power. However, this poem uses
irreverent, unfiltered language to capture the speaker’s defiance. The refrain—“I threw in an
extra fuck because tactics are rising in my throat”—functions as both lament and battle cry of
resistance. The poem challenges decorum, questioning what is deemed excessive in language and
emotion, where “fuck isn’t all about what you say. ” Here profanity is rebellion and reaction
where each extra fuck is a seed planted in a bed of fucks.
In the poem “Anarchy City,” the urban landscape becomes both a battleground and a mirror,
reflecting the chaos of modern existence. The poem’s restless rhythm and jagged enjambments
propel the reader through streets imbued with latent violence and frenetic energy: “In the city of
anarchy, in the veil of the city is the first city, the caricature of the city, the anxiety of the city is
the first of the city, the / origin of the city, the knowledge of the city…” Again, Umansky’s deft use
of fragmentation, innovative form, and repetition seeks to enact the disorientation of tyranny.
The erratic rhythm mirrors disorder.
The collection seeks to find answers. In “What Does the X Mark?” the “X” represents restriction,
barrier, and/or a warning. The poem, written in vignettes, questions power dynamics, agency, and
the social performance of desire and authority: “Her body, an X of bone and bone, her body, a
warning, a stop, a flare.” The woman becomes a metaphor for refusal: ” I look up from my
felt-life to my real life.” The overlapping forces of social hierarchy and eroticism create a
charged atmosphere, within the confines of transport such as in a subway station, a Lyft, or train:
“I stare at these circuits of power and play, of desire and play, of power and crosshairs (and God,
it felt like a warning).”
In “Burn,” a fire motif serves as destruction and transformation where the narrator pleads: “so
this / is what it is like / to live / in the dark / where hate / is the only fuel / to light the darkness”
which underscores the thematic concerns of despair, renewal, and reckoning. Fire, like tyranny, is
self-consuming, and “no / starry night / no / beacon of light / no / no / no / no.” Moreover, the pain
of change leaves no comfort in the darkness / which darkens / its dark / with hate.”
Of particular note is the poem “God is God and the Universe is the Universe,” for it reads like a
philosophical meditation on faith and existential doubt, capturing the wavering nature of belief in
a reflection of W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”: “and maybe the center will hold.” The
prayer-like repetition ends with a coda: “and maybe I will see with these eyes / that this country is
good / that people are mostly good / and that I knew the whole time / that I was good.”
At the end of the collection, in the weighty prose poem “Tyrant as Self-Reflection,” the reader
finds a fragmented breakdown of identity that explores how people become their own tyrants:
“In your rise is the tyrant’s rise.” The narrator understands complicity is also oppression: “In you,
he sees himself. In / your admiration, is his admiration. In your admiration, is his own / admiration
of yourself…”
At its core, Of Tyrant is a book about survival and resistance. The collection’s formal innovation
is among its strengths. Umansky’s use of repetition, enjambment, and fragmentation mirrors the
experience of navigating a world steeped in ideological conflict. Her poems oscillate between
lyric meditation and declarative protest, creating a sense of urgency that refuses complacency.
With Of Tyrant, Leah Umansky cements a voice in contemporary poetry that confronts power
with ferocity, poetic verve, and experimentation. Her poems employ her three guiding stars: the
powers of voice, presence, and bearing witness.
Lizzy Itkin grew up in Briarcliff Manor, New York and studied literature and political science at the University of Wisconsin.