You don't have to go to Mars for love

Harvey (Hemming the Water) explores in her striking latest the relationship between freedom, social justice, and the lyric imagination. Spanning a variety of literary forms, from prose poems and lyric fragments to sonnets, the work in this frequently gorgeous collection is unified by its concern with cultivating and articulating a collective consciousness. Harvey critiques popular culture and its myriad incarnations of "grand theft auto," allowing poems to provide an alternate psychic space that affords the possibility of community and empowerment: "Part of the answer. is about. learning from/ & adapting. to each other. Part of the answer./ is about. Abbey Lincoln/ & Madonna. & Erykah. Badu." Discordant experiences and historical moments, as well as various types of rhetoric, are vividly placed in conversation with one another, allowing poems to offer a hypothetical testing ground for preserving history and jostling hierarchies. Readers will be captivated by Harvey's voice and vision. (Sept.)

Winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for Hemming the Water, Harvey returns after seven years with a collection featuring an unnamed protagonist pushing the boundaries of her Black body while undertaking an Afro-futuristic journey--not surprising for a poet who claimed an Eisner Award for her contribution to World of Wakanda. She opens with portraits of Black womanhood, ranging from a mother worried about her sports-playing son's injury to a stunning portrait of Etta James, then streams this imagery into her vision of the troubled magpie ("a blend-in bird") who wants to start over. The result is an imaginatively wrought journey through snow ("Down weakly in a snow bank/ She slid into her own self") and space ("Nobody straightens their hair anymore./ Space trips & limited air supplies will get you conscious quick") to the unknowable promise of a Great Beyond. Do you have to go to Mars for love? VERDICT Harvey delivers a pervasive understanding of hunting for self, identity, and safety, rimmed with triumph ("The boy outflamed/ the flame he was becoming") and told in language that's fluid, headlong, and edgily conversational.