Kirjahaku

These poems are daring, challenging in tone, at moments enigmatic. They move wonderfully in and out of figurative flight and let plain statement take over in unexpected places, often turning up a surprise topic. They don't pretend not to suffer, but they don't brood. Cued by its title, this collection explores everything implied in Stevens's "I wish that I might be a thinking stone." Etched by thinking, here is an aesthetic to offset chagrin and disappointment, aging, and sympathies with other beings that would otherwise be too intense.

These poems are daring, challenging in tone, at moments enigmatic. They move wonderfully in and out of figurative flight and let plain statement take over in unexpected places, often turning up a surprise topic. They don't pretend not to suffer, but they don't brood. Cued by its title, this collection explores everything implied in Stevens's "I wish that I might be a thinking stone." Etched by thinking, here is an aesthetic to offset chagrin and disappointment, aging, and sympathies with other beings that would otherwise be too intense.

Robertson's intriguing new volume of delightful and challenging thoughts and memories speaks to one's singular heart. Darting from the cauldron of COVID to the secret world of nature and animals, on to issues of #BLM and through the essence of language and thought, she captures our imagination.

In Revenge, Lauri Robertson's biting 6th volume of poetry, a woman becomes so angry that she throws a piece of plastic into the regular garbage instead of the recycling. But, it's not all a revenge-lite catalogue; note the Girl Scouts accidentally or otherwise leaving her out of the troop because her mother was in a psychiatric hospital. The vignettes resonate deeply, and remind the reader of their own stories. Robertson, who happens to be a psychoanalyst, makes unvarnished, dumbfounded inquiry into our nature(s). This is not appalling, worldly revenge, though perhaps some kind of understanding begins here.