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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 11, 2024
This book is fucking brilliant.
Like. I read the first poem and then stared into the middle distance forever.
It makes me want to go write. It makes me feel like what I am trying to say has already been said.
So. Good.
I hope it draws the attention of all the big award givers this year.
Like. I read the first poem and then stared into the middle distance forever.
It makes me want to go write. It makes me feel like what I am trying to say has already been said.
So. Good.
I hope it draws the attention of all the big award givers this year.
June 2, 2026
We are so used to having narrative foregrounded in our poems that when it isn't a book seems as if it comes from an entirely different genre. Yes, this is a book about loss, about the end of a marriage, perhaps even the deaths of loved ones. But the story is all in image and the urgency of repetition. That repetition is the formal presence of the book. Not only are words repeated within poems, but words and phrases are repeated throughout the book. They build like a drum beat for the reader, accumulating and forcing themselves on us. Even the title of the book--suggesting a prayer or a call to prayer -- is the title of 14 poems in the collection.
Spencer uses the whole page for her poems, giving them space to spread across the field. That makes it a difficult poem to quote from, but here's some left-justified lines from a long poem in sections, called "A Window/Nine Attempts:"
I think I see the swallows singing
along the arched prayer
of flight. If not a world of objects, how does light
gild the very edge
of one wing? I notice the glass, reticent.
I think: its distances
are thronging
in us. The scuffed horizon,
blue axiom
of longing.
I will see that prayer the next time I watch a swallow fly (and I watch swallows fly often!)
The book is a very sad book, beautifully sad, but it also has that quality of prayer, and prayer, as we know, no matter from which depth it arises, always is tinged with hope.
This is a wonderful book of poems!
Spencer uses the whole page for her poems, giving them space to spread across the field. That makes it a difficult poem to quote from, but here's some left-justified lines from a long poem in sections, called "A Window/Nine Attempts:"
I think I see the swallows singing
along the arched prayer
of flight. If not a world of objects, how does light
gild the very edge
of one wing? I notice the glass, reticent.
I think: its distances
are thronging
in us. The scuffed horizon,
blue axiom
of longing.
I will see that prayer the next time I watch a swallow fly (and I watch swallows fly often!)
The book is a very sad book, beautifully sad, but it also has that quality of prayer, and prayer, as we know, no matter from which depth it arises, always is tinged with hope.
This is a wonderful book of poems!
September 16, 2024
What a farewell to a relationship and what a welcome to memory and what is still to come! With her hallmark lyricism and quietly stunning imagery the author spins sequence after gorgeous sequence into yet another must-read collection of poetry that is sure of itself, its loves, and its sources; and thus, inspiring as well as encouraging.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews