A Dynamic Exchange Between Us

Caleshu's new collection is magnificent. There's something uniquely pleasurable and painful about the blinding insights in every prose poem. It's like someone looking you in the eye and, unusually, feeling compelled to hold their gaze. What really moves me here is the way we hedge our disappointment, play our joy against our self-awareness. So much love and fear and grace and frustration: it's at once uncomfortable and deeply life-affirming. It's maybe a rare quality in contemporary poetry, but what makes this work so authentically alive, so urgent and poignant is that very ambivalence, delivered with a restless intellect and wit and turn of phrase that keeps you coming back. -Luke Kennard See more