Inside Spiders

The generally brief poems in Shinn’s debut collection, winner of the 2013 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, alternate between the lyric and mythic, and provide a spider’s view of the private sphere. Shinn offers observations of slight shifts of time and organic movement from a perspective rich in solitude and contemplation. She reaches an unexpected and beguiling clarity as her gaze falls on “Live dice, the two bees/ tumbling in the white window”; a snail’s “beautiful/ skirts dragging ruffling against the green glass” of an aquarium tank; or her muse, the spider, with a web “pinned as it is// at the glass and the sash.” In a rare moment of reflection on her process, Shinn writes, “I keep, as the light leans down, note/ of his stays and his drift,/ and have his/ drawn map now to draw to mine.” While spiders, “uncounted and everyplace,” here represent a kind of dark and chaotic force, it is the fruits of their labors—their “considered, resolute, and fine” webs—that are held in high esteem. Shinn spins webs of her poems as she quietly and purposefully endeavors to “light the heart’s dark lantern.” (Aug.)