A Year: And Other Poems

From the celebrated author of feeld comes a formally commanding third collection, dexterously recounting the survival of a period suffused with mourning. Jos Charles's poems communicate with one another as neurons do: sharp, charged, in language that predates language. 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. I wanted to believe, Charles declares, a corner a print leaned to / a corner can save / a people. Still the house falls apart. Death visits and lingers. Belief proves, again and again, that belief alone is not enough. Yet miraculously, one might still manage to seek--propelled by love, or hope, or sometimes only momentum--something better. There is a place where there are no futile longings, no persistent institutional threats to one's life. Poems might take us there; tenderness, too, as long as we can manage to keep moving. A current / gives as much as it has, writes Charles--despite fire, despite loss. Harrowing and gorgeous, a Year & other poems is an astonishing new collection from a poet of unusual beauty and lyricism (New Yorker).