Feel Free

In Laird’s precise, energetic fourth collection (after Go Giants), his chief poetic gift—an intimate voice of mixed vernaculars that gets inside the reader’s head—is on full display. Whether bedside with his children, walking “a scrubby acre at Creggandevesky,” watching a sea bass that eyes him from a plate, or navigating traffic en route to his dying mother in hospice, Laird’s line has musical integrity and strength. Infusing the intensity of childhood with the sorrow of losing a parent, Laird explores this timeless subject in “The Folding,” in which he folds paper snowflakes with his children. Here, childhood and parenthood are presented as the same thing, reversed. Before the poem concludes with a gorgeously described snowy day, it observes “that infinite complexity’s composed/ by simple rules.” Similarly, another standout poem in the collection, “The Vehicle and the Tenor,” rises to the manic threshold of grief, the devastating reality of his mother’s dying, “beyond metaphor.” Laird offers the reader a subtle, lasting meditation exploring the family as it was, as it is, or as it could be. (July)