Square Inch Hours: Poems

“It takes just one unattended moment for an hour to pass,” writes Santos (The Intricated Soul) in this collection of subtle, reflective prose poems. But in the moment attended, which could describe each text’s narrative frame, one finds a microcosm. Sometimes Santos’s scenes are emotionally charged: in one poem, for example, a couple close out the day after an argument in silence until “darkness cheeped like a tiny bird”; in another, Santos writes, “The hour of my mother’s funeral I spent clearing out her overgrown flowerbeds.” These moments, early in the book, give a savor of solitude to the collection, although most of the book is composed of mundane scenarios—engaging in daily routines, observing strangers, or waiting at a table to be served. These diorama-like texts, which locate a range of human feelings in the sundry details of the everyday, are something of a contemporary Book of Disquiet; Pessoa, who Santos directly invokes, tends inward and toward moments of stillness as he speaks through a heteronym: “not as himself, but for himself.” For his part, Santos offers a great deal of quotidian action, whether it’s a passing moment or a single day. (July)