Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this highly anticipated second book from Szybist (Granted), love poetry and poetry of religious faith blend and blur into one transcendent, humbled substance, in which a beloved is asked, "Just for this evening, won't you put me before you/ until I'm far enough away you can/ believe in me?" Also blended and blurred are the biblical and the contemporary, the divine and the self, as in "Update on Mary," a quiet pun on the author's name and that of her namesake, in which "It is not uncommon to find Mary falling asleep on her yoga mat when she has barely begun to stretch." "Annunciation" poems spread throughout the book discover god in all sorts of unlikely places, such as beneath the clothes of a cross-dressing man: "And when I learned that he was not a man-/ Bullwhip, horsewhip, unzip, I could have crawled/ Through thorn and bee." Finally, though, whether or not readers are attuned to the religious content, these are gorgeous lyrics, in traditional and invented forms-one poem is a diagrammed sentence while another radiates from an empty space at the center of the page-which create close encounters with not-quite-paraphrasable truths. This is essential poetry (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Szybist's long-awaited second collection (after the National Book Critics Circle award finalist Granted) is a mirage of inventive, intense, and dichotic poems. Reincarnations of the biblical Mary appear and reappear, creating a game of who's who for the reader. Lines seem to emerge from a dark place-"Sleeper, still untouched by/ gravity, invisible/ for the stone, I cannot"-and, once on the page, the words pace between two realities reminiscent of a heaven and a hell. At times overly emotive, Szybist has a tendency to demonstrate the opposite of what her lines decree-she is in a way noting herself even though she offers this question: "I wonder what I am, that anyone should note me." VERDICT The lyrically solid Szybist is never static, but her poems work best for the emotional reader, the one who wants to be told how to see the mystery.-Annalisa Pesek, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
