“The Crescent Moon: A Review of Katie Manning’s '28,065 Nights'” by Casey Driver

The loss of a grandmother can be a truly difficult thing, especially if you happen to be close, and the 2020 poetry chapbook, 28,065 Nights, which is dedicated to the author’s late grandmother, contains 15 poems that give insight to their relationship and bond. The author, Katie Manning, is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online literary magazine, Whale Road Review, and also teaches writing at Point Loma Nazarene University, located in San Diego. In 2016, Manning won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and her work has appeared in Poet Lore, New Letters, and Verse Daily. Additionally, MORIA Literary Magazine had the honor of publishing two of these poems in 2019, “Nevermore” and “The New Owner Invited Me In.” If you fancy these poems, you should definitely pick up this book.
Manning does a wonderful job of keeping her memories and her grandmother alive in the poems: “You told me that when you were young, poor girls used vanilla extract as perfume.” Such lines paint an image of a young woman lost in time. Manning puts you in the moment, and you can see the bond she shared with her grandmother so clearly.
In “The Last Time I Saw You Alive,” Manning recalls memories that give you a look at their relationship in a very intimate way: “The last time I saw you alive, you told me how cute, how smart, how much you loved my son. You told me other things I would never repeat, not even to you if you were here now.” These perhaps-startling sentiments create a bit of a chilling implication, which lead to such an extreme sense of privacy between the two that it leaves the reader wondering: what could a loving grandchild never repeat to their beloved grandmother?
From beginning to end, this book is an adventure that takes you on a long journey from the perspective of a child. For instance, in “Twenty Years Before You Died,” the voice of the grandchild navigating the Age of Reason and her inherited belief systems offers us this fear: “I was ten. You and Grandpa smoked cigarettes and didn’t attend church, and I was terrified that you wouldn’t get into Heaven. I didn’t want to live forever without you.”
The last poem and title of the book, “28,065 Nights,” begins with a line that also speaks as the last line for the entire book—“I tell your stories to keep myself alive”—a powerful and great line that pulls everything together, although one might expect the line to go, “I tell your stories to keep YOU alive.” But here, in this work, the speaker is adamant that the memories give life to the recipient, as they have special magic, a life-sustaining force. Manning has done a wonderful job of remembering her grandmother and keeping the bond between them alive in 28,065 Nights—which, by the way, works out to 76.9 years, the lifespan of a grandparent well-loved.

Casey Driver

Casey Driver is a senior Writing major at Woodbury University, who is minoring in Game Design and hopes to be able to create narrative storyboards for the gaming industry as his future career.