Crushing It

“The brain is hardwired for stories,” writes Knox (Days of Shame and Failure) in her darkly inventive fifth collection. Her speakers refrain from judgment as they investigate how stories and anecdotes may help people understand themselves and others: “And that two-step bar behind/ the casino? Fake. I can’t prove it. I just know.” The collection’s first section, “Mines,” is made up primarily of poems built from this kind of gut-feeling reportage, while the second section, “Ours,” relies on occasionally surreal poetic associations. “So imagine my surprise when I opened one eye,” she writes in “My Mother Visits Me in Prison Again,” “saw the flower, and it filled me all the way to/ the edges and felt good.” Through this shift, Knox reframes the tight lens of the book’s first half, allowing imaginative situations and dialogues, as well as startling juxtapositions, to form naturally. For all its easily flowing language and interest in casual conversation, this is a careful, thoughtful book about the complexities of identity and the difficulty of words. (Oct.)