A lively and profound volume of poetry.
Catherine Wagner makes poetry of contemporary erudition and confession out of a new sort of baroque plain speech. Her roving eye and ear take into consideration all the offerings of our world—magazines, breakfast, ghosts—and find brilliant encryptions of human physical reality in perfect words. Nothing is too far away or too close to warrant reaction: Good Housekeeping, Edmund Spenser, mayonnaise, boobs, death; all comprise Wagner’s vernacular of music and knowledge, a kind of thinking out loud that translates into a witty, vertiginous awareness.
