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Imagination is a peculiar clay,
infinity captured
in the dark matter we don’t understand."
One of the most alluring and powerful things about poetry is that it offers the poet the opportunity to say things indirectly, using the simple selection of words to make the ordinary magical. For example, there is the attention to detail in poems like “Drano Didn’t Work,” which chronicles the hiring of a drainage company to service the author’s home. The same care is given to poems about bad hospital food and the dread of an unpleasant diagnosis or a dying friend. This collection of poems broaches these big and small eventualities of life with the same gravity, processing them with the same levity. It illustrates how the same coping tools can tackle any problem, and how a sardonic but compassionate view will find the silver lining in any challenge.
The smallest adjustments in meter or vocabulary allow these poems to work flexibly through the eye of the reader. Each of the selections in this book can land a gut punch as heavy as a brick or flit about tragic events almost playfully. Such a duality is only possible through meticulous and precise writing. The author weaves her way through overseas atrocities, small-town Americana, and references to Scooby Doo with the same deftness. Every word is a receptacle for however much meaning the reader decides to fill it with. There still manages to be a voice and a message and meaning to these poems, giving the poet a platform to speak her mind and share her experiences. That razor’s edge of difference between ambiguity and clarity breathes immense power into these poems and absolutely makes them a worthwhile read.
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