Circa

This debut from the promising Zeavin—who is now an undergrad at Yale and has associations with both the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and Naropa University—is a lush, fantastical and surprisingly mature collection. Playful at times, dark at others, Zeavin references everything from the Holocaust to the X-files in poems that are fascinated with history, both real and imagined, and have the atmosphere of a decaying modern fairy tale. Zeavin is best in her clearest moments, managing to be at once violent, humorous and interesting: “I saw the bird explode overhead/ feathers falling little gnats of blood/ and your shotgun dropped to my foot: you call this dinner.” Each poem inhabits its own space, outside of time and reality, in which characters like the Good Gesture Idiot and Nick DeBoer the Bank Man are free to kiss clocks or spread brownie batter on their knees as they see fit, and in which no hero looks “like the prince from any kind of sane/ province.” At her best, Zeavin is as sure-footed as a new poet 10 years her senior. (Apr.)