Bøker utgitt av Finishing Line Press

At first, John Guzlowski's Ikky¿ reminded me of Thomas Merton's The Way of Chuang Tzu. But Guzlowski broke away from the tradition of Western poets translating Asian texts. These Ikky¿ poems were not originally written by the great Japanese Buddhist monk; rather, they were playfully invented, forged by the vast and imaginative mind of Guzlowski. Like any Zen text, Guzlowski's Ikky¿ is a journey into contradictions, where laughter and sadness commingle, where meaning is embedded in meaninglessness, where sound is found in silence, where from winter comes spring which is followed by fall. There is both simplicity and depth in this little book. And in the center of it, the life force of these poems, is the still point, one that we desperately need in our chaotic world of strife, confusion, and ignorance. -Bunkong Tuon, writer and critic at Union CollegeJohn Guzlowski traces the journey of the mad monk poet Ikky¿ from the sea to the temple in a series of startling, luminous, precisely imagined, brief, interlocking poems-poems in the spirit of Ikky¿, certainly, but in a voice all his own; poems that make us laugh at ourselves even as they lead us deeper into an acceptance of the seasons of life and the inevitability of death. Each of these poems is a small lantern lighting the way toward wisdom and faith, revealing the world's beauty along the way. -Cecilia Woloch, author of CarpathiaI met Ikky¿ today, fifteenth-century mad-monk, long thought dead, but as alive as possible in the words of John Guzlowski's The Mad Monk Journeys from the Sea to the Temple. Guzlowski claims these are not Ikky¿ words, but Ikky¿'s final bit of mischief may be his invasion of the author's twenty-first-century pen to prove his influence is eternal-Eternal like the zen and humor in these poems. Eternal like reading this is a master class on the Tatami mats of Kyoto. John Guzowski gives a glimpse into an ancient poet's journey with a sensibility that reins with an endearing modern simplicity. It's a journey well worth taking. -Rick Lupert, author of The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express

An opalescent book, the prose poems of Recoveries weave philosophy, spirit, relationships, and psychiatry. The poems follow interactions between a doctor and patients, yet shimmer with wonderment and enigmatic possibilities. Within the narrative arc, Peter Snow has added sparse love poems, leading both the characters and us readers toward glimpses of higher consciousness. This posthumous book is a singular work from a wise storyteller.

"Radigan's work...turbocharged by her terrific way with dialogue... (has) the effect of honoring the character's autonomous, layered and mysterious being: wonder, the opposite of condescension." -Robert Pinsky, former US Poet Laureate

The poems in LIBERTY are a capsule of the summer of 2020, a summer of fear-- of what was within and of what was outside.****************"How long can a human sustain on fear?" The poems in Liberty scrape back layers of historical and contemporary suffering to expose the root of this question and others. Arceneaux skillfully traces connections between race, identity and survival while searching for a way out-a life after grief. -Amanda Johnston, Poet, Author of Another Way to Say EnterThe poems in Liberty are relentless. Relentless in confronting injustice. Relentless in naming names. Relentless is mining the self for signs of pain and endurance. Relentless in seeking clarity through image and word. Amiri Baraka relentless. Cherrie Moraga relentless. They demand response, and action. Read the book, then go out and work for change. -Steve Wilson, author of The Reaches

In the chapbook epigraph, Diane R. Wiener's Flashes & Specks invokes Walt Whitman: "The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time-the curious whether and how, / Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?" Whitman's phrasing opens the door to a broad variety of poems that offer themselves as flashes and specks.The collection creates a cross-temporal landscape and waterscape of intermittent and overlapping themes, including friendship, familial alliances-both chosen and sanguineous-ecology, ephemerality, and equity. These themes co-mingle with and manifest via elements of irony, play, magic, and fantasy. The poems employ whimsy and seriousness simultaneously.Climate change, life at home, and myriad animals and other beings in nature center-and are centered by-the collection's orientation toward memory, mysticism, and hylozoism. While interpretations are always up to the reader, the poems are underscored by neuroqueer sensibilities. Contemporary local and global events, including social violence, oppression, and wildfires, are exposed through wordplay and metaphysical approaches toward cerebrality, emotional variance, and matrix-like thinking.Like the steampunk watercolor and ink chapbook cover by artist Lucy Wales, a new world is imagined in these poems that fuses with while separating from its own past. On both personal and macro-level scales, mourning and honoring the old accompany hoping for the new; cautious optimism engages with critique, to suggest not nostalgic but reflective concurrent truths in a fragile present and plausible future. Society, family, and self are described in a context where nearly everything is or might be welcomed-except fascism.Erasing while underscoring distinctions, centering Crip consciousness and Disability cultures, and believing in the possibility of sentience everywhere, the poems range from koan-like to lyrical narrative in the context of a time imploded by political crises, social unrest, a global health emergency, and the changing of the guard.

Mo Corleone's brilliant debut collection Around the Lake begins boldly. The scorching poems that follow-ghazals, pantoums, abecedarians, nonets, and others-capture the energies and sounds swirling in Oakland's 2020 streets. Activists, musicians, workers, people in masks, people in traffic-all clamor to be heard in Corleone's impassioned poems of "fists in electric air," helicopters, motorcycles, drummers, DJs, "candles flowers screams." We come to understand how "my soul is rattled from battle/ true justice may not be something i see/ in this life." Yet the quest for justice and peace echoes urgently throughout Mo Corleone's artistry within these powerful pages. -Kathleen McClung, author of A Juror Must Fold in on Herself and Temporary KinUniquely Oakland in flavor, her poems, like 100% dark chocolate, are dense, rich, and delightfully bitter. And gone far too soon-the taste remaining on the tongue dissolves, revealing a mastery of form. Savor this book. Every poem rewards rereading, and sharing aloud with a friend. -Elaine Watt, Lake County Poet Laureate EmeritusThis extraordinary work of art penned by Mo Corleone is literary genius, authentic and honest. The poems capture the emotions and thoughts that so many of us are experiencing. Mo isn't afraid to speak her truth, blending the cold realities of today with the hopefulness of a brighter tomorrow. As a fellow artist and activist, it's empowering. -LaDasha-Diamond, Community Leader, Educator, and Entrepreneur

Through formal sestinas, pantoums, and other verse just skirting the edge of terror and grief we travel into a kind of daily survival.***********************A caesura is a pause in a line of poetry using the rhythms of natural speech rather than of meter. In Taut Caesuras, Dionne uses pauses to bring home the mighty punches of addiction, of loss, of biological predispositions, and ultimately enlightenment. -Sheila Bender, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief"Part eulogy, part interrogation, in the poems of Taut Caesuras Dionne stares down the familial ravages of mental illness and the fragility of the body. Are our genetics prophecy or opportunity? How much of our suffering is in the mind and in our history? Harnessing the power of multiple poetic forms, Dionne urges the reader to reconsider just how much free will we actually have against the brain's demands. But more importantly, how do we love well despite ourselves?" -Lauren Davis, author of Each Wild Thing's ConsentThe last line of her final poem, Mt. Elinor, could be an epigraph for Pamela Moore Dionne's entire collection ...by the time I reach you/I've considered/what I've done to save myself. What Ms.Dionne has done, is place the pickaxe of her intellect and memory into personal experience. The emotions contained within these carefully crafted poems build and infuse this brilliant collection. We climb our way with her through formal sestinas, pantoums, and other verse just skirting the edge of terror and grief. A crown of sonnets details her adored brother's life and suicide. Another poem describes the birth of a grandchild with a devastating disease. This collection gathers a taut wisdom that is earned through the exploding intellect and tenacious restraint of a survivor. As Dionne says, "Each of us breathes, the now that we are given." We can all learn and grow from reading these fine poems. -Gayle Kaune, author Noise from Stars and All the Birds Awake

Learning to Sleep in the Middle of the Bed got its title before the collection of poems came together. Through poetry, Alexis Cameron Stark wrote her way through difficult and uncomfortable emotions and experiences from her first-year post-grad. Growing up in Metro Detroit, Michigan, Stark took her first leap towards independence by attending the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University, before moving to Grand Rapids in 2019. Learning to cope with life changes and starting over is challenging and requires familiarity with identity and life goals. Accepting the light and dark parts of herself proved to be a cathartic first step. Learning to Sleep in the Middle of the Bed introduces readers to a quirky, introverted poet, who comfortably shares her struggles with forgetfulness and the inability to keep plants alive but shies away from calling to order food or meeting new people. The author also boldly provides her opinions on her mom's ugly knit sweater in "My Mom's 90s Sweater" and the social construct of gender norms introduced early in childhood with the whimsically titled "Super-patriarchal-color-me-heteronorma-docious." Lighthearted and imaginative poems move into a darker middle, where the poems begin to grapple with a lack of control in "Intuition" and "Red Light, Green Light." "Mantra for Recovery" was inspired by the inmates of the Richard A. Hanlon Correctional Facility, where Stark facilitated writing workshops alongside students from MSU's Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. The collection's title poem "Learning to Sleep in the Middle of the Bed" confesses Stark's commitment to healing and coping with anxiety through therapy. Alongside her therapist, she processed heartbreak, "Trust Issues," and a new job in a new city. She leaned into her faith along the journey, as described on "Serenity Prayer," and to her physical strength through weightlifting, in "Church in the Wild." The collection concludes with the author's musing on writing her legacy and how she wants to be known as a writer. Poems from this collection have also been featured in the East Lansing Art Festival Poetry Press.¿

Half a century after viewers first watched a father and son walking to the local fishing hole, whistling a simple, yet unforgettable, tune, The Andy Griffith Show remains one of the most popular sitcoms in the history of American television. Tens of millions of viewers have seen the show either in its original run, its ongoing reruns, on DVD, or on the internet. A small cottage industry has even developed around the teachings of the show's episodes. One of the first episodes centers on a stranger who, having heard so many good things about Mayberry, intends to adopt it as his hometown. The stranger, Ed Sawyer, knows as much about Mayberry as any of the natives. While doing research in the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina for his book on The Andy Griffith Show, A Cuban in Mayberry, Gustavo Pérez Firmat came across "The Mayberry Chronicles," a collection of poems by Ed Sawyer about the characters in the show, from Andy and Barney to Mr. Schwump and the Fun Girls. Even the pounded steak at Morelli's makes an appearance to utter one word: Ouch!

Peter Vanderberg's, celestial navigation, is inspired by his years serving in the U. S. Navy before, during, and after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. These poems explore themes of survival, fatherhood, and war, why also seeking spiritual awareness and peace. In conversation with the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina, as well as Taoist philosophy and military survival manuals, celestial navigation charts a course through conflict toward transcendence.

"I look for hidden meanings in incidental moments, poet Bill Ratner says in "Try My Luck," one of many intriguing poems in To Decorate A Casket. These highly original poems stir things up-a wild concoction of exploration, confession, and surreal fantasy, each topped with a soupçon of wry wit. Whether mourning the early demise of his beloved parents and older brother, or riffing on being the one left behind to come of age on his own, Ratner's poems find life's humor and sweetness. They kick off their shoes and dance with Death." -Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Junkie Wife, Poetry editor of Cultural Weekly"Reading these poems, one can't help wondering if Ratner is a storyteller at heart who's found the form of the poem to convey the snapshots and short tales of his life, or if he's a poet who, like Homer, poured his dactyls into the epics of his time. Like a good storyteller, Ratner sidles up to you, whispers the opening of a tale, then brings in the big guns of poetry to make it all work. These poems are masterful, touching, evocative, and Ratner himself is a master-builder at work, a man who shapes words out of airy nothing and commands them to speak." -Jack Grapes, Last of the Outsiders, Chatwin Press"Bill Ratner's poetry is fearless and irreverent: bullets don't scare me / I survived one for my mother's breast / one for my brother's kidneys / one for my father's heart. He has gone through the tunnel and lived to tell the tale. Ratner holds nothing back, true to his own words, There is nothing so intimate / as a stranger's body / near you in the water. He invites you, the reader, to leave the shallow waters and meet him in the deep end." -Kohenet Rachel Kann, How to Bless the New Moon, Ben Yehuda Press

There is something difficult to address in the poems of Robert Simon's new collection, An Ode To Friendship. Perhaps, it is the purity contained in the flagrantly traditional and formal language that wraps itself from cover to cover. Some might find fault with such a jarring approach, given the 21st Century we find ourselves gasping through of late. I am of the other opinion. When reading Simon's work, I become lost in what one must assume to have been a painfully liquid transition, through a seamless and unspecified period of time. These are poems where technique meets soul; where that very same soul is in a constant struggle with its brother, intellect. Robert Simon sneaks up on us with this, and the result becomes a deliciously subtle agony, recognizing how tears and tears can intersect, causing delight in the midst of despair. -Sam Pereira

Unrequited Love and Other Things of Equal Importance, Alejandro Ruiz del Sol's debut poetry chapbook, explores how a voice can find love for others and self-love in a bent vision of reality. Set in "Florida" among "alligators," this strange collection of poems interrogates Ruiz del Sol's own Latinx life and experiences with poverty.¿

In this first collection by Midwest writer BD Feil, Lifting Myself By My Own Toes, the poems pull from experiences and observations across the Great Lakes, from the cities of Chicago and Cleveland to the rurality of southeast Michigan and of northwest Ohio. Through memory and trial, familial legend and Nature, Feil examines the comfort of place and the discomfort of misplacement. In the first group of poems, "well-meaning strokes," BD Feil muses on the vitality of words and graspings at meaning. In "A Reading" he bemoans at jumping to a taste, a heavy burden akin to lifting "himself by his own toes." The next group of poems, "savages and monsters," alternates between standing inside and outside Nature, not only in the idealized worlds of "Heaven" and "Night" but in the longer poems of "Monster" and "In Which Mrs. Adams Observes And Passes Judgment On The Cottonwood And The Goldfinch" where observation spins into running narrative. In the poems of "red-knuckled apples," Feil likens himself to fruit "left hanging to the end" andf digs into memory, of his own and of his family. In "Visiting" he remembers eavesdropping on stories peopled with "names like Florence and Rhiney and two Edwins." Finally, the last section, "now is the time for the sighing," deals with the quest for place, either in the larger universe or in the intimacy of the mirror as in "Boy and a Button" where a child lays out his likes and dislikes all the while "his little fingers weaving/ exquisite patterns against/ a bright blue sky no one/ but him has ever noticed." Poems in this collection by BD Feil have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes as well as appearing in journals like Poet Lore, Slice Magazine, The Penn Review, New Plains Review, Margie, and Plainsongs.

"Grace Covill-Grennan's hibernation, a hush is a collection that I simultaneously wanted to read through in one sitting, and also take many moments to savor each word and line. With her words, she pulls you into the forest, onto the trail, deep into nature and also into the intimate weavings of her life. Grace Covill-Grennan incorporates playful use of language and beautiful images to paint a world you can viscerally feel. The poems in this book will leave you thirsty for more." -Angie Ebba, poet, essayist, and educator"In this chapbook Grace Covill-Grennan turns and turns over a richly physical awareness of her world and the 'slipping by of finite, unceremonious time.' These poems inhabit with fluency the pleasures of form and language play, an imagination marking its own mapless trails and moments of hard earned clarity." -Ell Nasshahn, author of The Leaving and it's Static Center

"Miriam Moore-Keish writes hopeful young heaviness like she always does, with a kindness for setting and a sternness for structures and institutions. The busyness of thick food, wine, eyeliner, humidity, and the blood of different peoples who cannot stop loving and hating each other consumes these works, and our only guiding light is the narrator's unlikely hope that maybe she can figure it all out. These poems are what the American South can be for some and must become for so many others-alert, tactile, and learning." -Bethany Catlin, Rain Taxi Review of Books"In Cherokee Rose Miriam Moore-Keish writes about the pain of family, the pain of the South, the beauty of family, the beauty of the South, the complexity of family, complexity of the South, and also the beauty, pain, and complexity of faith." -Terra Elan McVoy, author of The Summer of Firsts and Lasts, Pure, and Being Friends with Boys"Moore-Keish captures tastes of biscuits and irony. You'll find the South here." -Cindy Henry McMahon, author of Fresh Water from Old Wells

Most of the poems in BEYOND THAT HILL I GATHER are portraits of women who are notable for their achievements. While this common thread runs throughout the book, there is much variety since the women come from various walks of life-authors, musicians, artists, comedians, activists, suffragists. Each poem captures a different flavor as each individual is unique. A partial list of those who appear in the book are Patty Smith, Amy Schumer, Clarice Lispector, Louise Brooks, Joan Rivers, Cherie Currie, Liz Phair, and Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun.

An often dark and brooding debut, We Give Birth to Light explores love and loss, sickness and death, hope and light. The collection is permeated with Weltschmerz, a sense of melancholy and world-weariness. In poems like "The Poetry of My Final Days," the speaker insists there is "nothing left to be tired of," and, in "The Stain," the speaker realizes not only "what we had lost," but "the / nothing we had gained." In "For a Time," a husband watches his wife die slowly of cancer, while in "We Give Birth to Light," a mother loses a child and a husband. But in the latter poem, the mother does not bemoan the darkness that comes with such loss, knowing that it is necessary if there is going to be light.Born in Nebraska and raised in South Dakota, Carson often alludes to his rural upbringing. In "This is Just How It Is," the speaker's stoic mother raises goats and cuts heads off of chickens, while, in "Unforgiven," a grandfather who "used to love to roam" is imagined "gliding across the plains on a / horse, a lone rider." "Waiting for the Stars to Fall" recalls rural American circa 1950, a time when a kid could buy "Cup-O-Gold" candy at the A&P.Carson, in this collection, nods to his poetic influences. He dedicates "For a Time" to poet Tony Hoagland and "The Poetry of My Final Days" to Donald Hall, and he explicitly references W.S. Merwin and Mark Strand in "The Poetry of My Final Days" and "The Bookish Light," respectively. Poems from this collection have appeared in Eunoia Review, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Right Hand Pointing, Gyroscope, The Poetry Porch, Oddball Magazine, Dunes Review, BOOG City, Poetry Leaves, Crosswinds, Toho Journal, South Dakota in Poems, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, Monday Night, and Color:Story.

Double Stroller Dreams by Jesse Curran is a brilliant new chapbook of poems about navigating suburbanite parenthood with sunscreen, snacks, sippy cups, and tantrums surrounded by the burdens of a world in quarantine. Curran's poetry is a witness to new motherhood with its difficulties and delights. -Leah Huete de Maines¿

For Father and Many Other Things by Dr. Matthew Diomede is a poetry selection that reveals his closeness to his Italian-American family and to all of nature. His images of nature like night father and day mother are the archetypes of all people. His book is a tribute to all of life and death and the preciousness of both. This poetry book manuscript was originally recommended by John Ashbery as an Award-Finalist in the Virginia Commonwealth University Contemporary Series.

"Sara Sams' Atom City opens with a caution, "But Think, Are You Authorized to Tell It." In poems of sharp wit and riveting investigation, tell it she does! Aware of the irony of "grow[ing] up happy / in a town that knitted / mushroom clouds," Sams documents government duplicity and the revisionist history of developing the atomic bomb. The volume is punctuated by poems rich in details of her Appalachian roots and a magnificent series about local legend "Prophet John," who foresaw the bomb a century ago. Exploratory poems from the "vast archive of the atoms" are tempered by tender poems of loss and love. This is a bold debut by a major new poet." -Cynthia Hogue, author of In June the Labyrinth"Sara Sams' Atom City shows us what violence and invisible interiority and tenderness is at the core of the American hometown. At the core of the American superpower myth. At the core of American exceptionalism, and uranium, and the atom, itself-which is at the core of everything. When hometown is intertwined with the mushroom cloud, when childhood is entangled with the physicist, Sams teaches us that you can "feel your fibers loosen, too-then fall,/ after standing years, involuntarily, on end." I will never think of the bomb, or America, the same way again, after reading this." -Sarah Vap, author of Viability"Each poem Sara Sams writes is a reckoning with man-made devastation. In her brilliant debut collection, she proves herself to be a poet of immense personal and historical depth as she investigates complicity in one of history's most frightening discoveries: the atomic bomb. The result is a haunting and intimate conversation about language and truth." -Diana Marie Delgado, author of Tracing the Horse, a New York Times Noteworthy Pick

In Spat, Lois Marie Harrod examines-head-on, upside down and sideways-the little fractures that haunt our intimate relationships. Intentional or no, sometimes mysterious in nature, they lead as often to bafflement as repair. "Well, says my therapist friend/the danger comes/when you start talking..." And also to what glues us together, as in. "...a rabbit leaps/between your legs,/and you feel his fur/brush your calves/and I imagine/I feel it too." Harrod is the keenest of observers-smart, wry, empathic and generous. These poems open windows, allowing us to eavesdrop on the bleating heart. -Juditha Dowd, author of Audubon's Sparrow and Mango in Winter.Who but Lois Marie Harrod would name a book Spat? Although the husband neglects to carry his glass to the sink, he remains "the guest of her heart." Whether about doorknobs, language, or the heart, these poems exhibit Harrod's unique combination of passion and humor. -Penelope Scambly Schott, author of On Dufur HillHarrod creates various personas in her new book of poems Spat. Some are contemplative, some nostalgic, some whimsical, all are smart. My favorite is the passive/aggressive narrator who asks, "What is there to fix?" about a marriage that needs much fixing. These poems are full of wit, "I don't know how to define our hide and tweak"...and wisdom, "the danger comes when you start talking." And there is music here, playful and beautiful music, "the rat a tat tattle in the brain," "jammering like a jackhammer." When you read these poems aloud, even your mouth will be happy. -Peter E. Murphy, Founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University

Poetry is a democratic art-probably now more than ever. Ellen Hernandez has collected everyday voices, and in their moments, we will find some of our own. -Matthew Sorrento, Editor-in-chief, Retreats from Oblivion: Journal of NoirCon and Co-editor, Film InternationalThe beauty of art is that it connects us no matter how we're separated-by miles, by years, or by a threat we can't see except in how it changes the world around us. Voices from a Pandemic reminds us that even in isolation, we are not alone, and that even in quarantine we can still be touched by the things that matter most. -Peter Woodworth, contributing author for fiction collections including the Anthology of Dreams, Death Is Not the End, and Gimme Shelter

My Father's Drawer explores the trajectory of the poet's life through childhood turbulence and mature hardship which she navigates with grace and resilience. Mintz's poetry does what we wish all poetry would: make even sadness a source of pleasure, because her words always come alive as she reveals through the magic of language a lamenting that never sounds self-absorbed but simply marks the achievement of wonder as the triumph of the poem.

In the crowded future is welcome company in uncertain times. From them a voice emerges, that of a fellow friend and traveller bending the reader's ear. These are poems for the non-poet and poet alike, offering a glimpse into the crowded future. Gurland is a student of Seamus Heaney and his influence shows. The poems in In the crowded future entice with their short forms and familiar, often conversational, tone. They frequently surprise, are wryly humorous, and leave the reader with more then they came for. They have also been described as deceptively simple. The poems resonate, revealing the extraordinary lurking just below the surface of the seemingly ordinary. David Daniels, former editor of Ploughshares writes: "When I first read these poems, I almost laughed out loud at how good they were-how true and brilliant and natural and honest. And how they could also have gone terribly wrong-but didn't. Time and again, I had the same reaction as I realized that Greer has found her way to a very special achievement. I believe this collection will reach a wide and grateful audience, and I'm honored to count myself among the grateful and to have been a witness to the beginning of an important career." Gurland earned her degree in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard College in 1991. Lucie Brock-Broido selected her to receive the Academy of American Poets Prize for Harvard College. Gurland attended Harvard Law School graduating in 1994. She then spent time raising a family and eventually advocating for children with special needs. During this journey, she discovered that writing remained an indispensable tool for forging meaning in the small moments that shape our lives, and for recording our humanity especially in times of uncertainty. Writes Michael Blumenthal, former Director of the Creative Writing Department at Harvard, "The quiet wisdom in these poems, their serenity in times of turbulence, can help us return us to the peacefulness we all seek, and so often find it difficult to achieve." In 2017, Gurland won the Baumeister Creative Writing Scholarship from Fairleigh Dickinson University where she went on to earn her MFA in Poetry in 2020. Finishing Line Press published her debut collection It Just So Happens...Poems to Read Aloud in 2018. The volume won national acclaim including Human Relations Indie Book Award Director's Choice Award 2018 Life Experiences Book of the Year. In the crowded future is Gurland's second volume of poetry. Gurland's themes suggest that she is a humanist in every sense of the word. By reading her work, one feels more human, at least more connected to the poet, and in a way that feels intimate, honest and ultimately, important. The crowded future seems brighter because of these poems. Lost human connections these days call for poems that instill the essence of humanity. These poems, like parables, each offer a glimpse into the future when society re-emerges forever changed.

In her exploration of the multiverse theory, Alvarez deals with several griefs created by the loss of two pregnancies, a beloved granduncle, her infant son, and finally her father, in the span of just four years, by constructing multiple alternate realities in which one or more of these people survived. In this process, Alvarez deals frankly and sometimes even starkly with death and its consequences on individuals and families. The book directly addresses the questions that plague many people who grieve: What if I had done this instead of that? Would it have mattered? Is there such a thing as fate?The topic of family and loss is a natural one for Alvarez, whose family emigrated from Cuba after the communist revolution, leaving all that they had ever known and loved behind, counting on the gamble of a better life in the United States. Like many immigrants at the time, they spent four years in Spain, where Alvarez was born, before moving permanently to Miami, Florida, where Alvarez still lives. This part of Alvarez's past informs a string of poems set before the main event of the book, the death of her son. The main string of the book's narrative is memoir; Alvarez suffered a miscarriage in 2016 that she explores briefly in a few poems (all the poems are titled "versions" numbered according to the narrative string they belong to). In 2017, she lost her beloved granduncle, Arturo, a grandfather figure. In 2018 she gave birth at just 27 ¿ weeks to twins, a boy named after her uncle and a girl. Thought it seemed at first as if her "micro preemies" were doing well, Arturo died of sepsis just twenty-six days after being born. She would spend another 66 days in the NICU until her daughter, Sara, was safe enough to bring home. A year later, her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and then died unexpectedly of a heart attack. This real timeline is woven into alternate timelines where some of these people survived or never existed, begging the questions, What if? and Why?The poems are written in narrative style, bypassing the opportunity for pathos such a storyline might involve. Alvarez's language is sure-footed and unflinching, not unwilling to delve into the darkest parts of memory and desire. The narrative strains are woven in such a way as to have the poems speak to one another instead of following chronology, yet the reader could tease each narrative string out of the braid using the poems' titles, providing two ways to read the book. Whichever way the book is read, however, it reinforces the themes of the importance of family, the longing for reconciliation, and the questioning of faith. The book's darkness is tempered by its never-ending supply of hope, in the form of the alternative narratives each of which is a version of the poet's life untainted by fear and loss.