Decoherent the Wing’ed

Zuba, a translator and art critic, makes her poetry debut with this intriguing and aptly titled collection, comprising a series of fragmented vignettes populated by a rotating cast of characters and anthropomorphized animals. If the archaic diction—“Travel’d thro this winged effigy of our breed at their shields”—and ageless agrarian setting gives the sense that this book-length poem is a parable or fairy tale, Zuba’s enigmatic musings and linguistic experiments preclude readers from deriving any clear lesson or moral from it: “If the sun has ever wondered why chickens seldom lay their heads on porches for shelter, I present my lily back.” Heightened literary language, with all its textures and conventions, is of utmost interest to this poet, who writes many of her lines backward and constantly deconstructs her own authority as narrator: “Yes, but which among me am I?” Roving between lush bucolic scenes and barely trackable thought experiments, Zuba’s book will manage to sustain most readers’ attention based on the merits of its strange and fable-like verse style, which is perhaps described best by Zuba herself: “it is a circular room/ with endless aisles, a soft bosom, a morsel or two.” (Nov.)