![]() “The luminous latest from Charles unfolds in a series of short lyrics over the course of a year, holding time's progression in a delicate balance with a changing self. Harrowing and gorgeous, a Year & other poems is an astonishing new collection from a poet of “unusual beauty and lyricism” ( New Yorker ). “A current / gives as much as it has,” writes Charles―despite fire, despite loss. Poems might take us there tenderness, too, as long as we can manage to keep moving. There is a place where there are no futile longings, no persistent institutional threats to one’s life. Yet miraculously, one might still manage to seek―propelled by love, or hope, or sometimes only momentum―something better. ![]() Belief proves, again and again, that belief alone is not enough. “I wanted to believe,” Charles declares, “a corner a print leaned to / a corner can save / a people.” Still the house falls apart. “A scandal / three cartons red / in a hedge / in / each the thousand eye research of flies.” With acute lyricism, she documents how a person endures seemingly relentless devastation―California wildfires, despotic legislation, housing insecurity―amid illusions of safety. Jos Charles’s poems communicate with one another as neurons do: sharp, charged, in language that predates language. ![]() ![]()
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