Still Falling

“I don’t know/ how we keep living in a world/ that never explains why,” Grotz (Window Left Open) writes in her ruminative and beautifully crafted fourth collection. Navigating love, grief, and the various losses one faces in a life, Grotz considers how “The mind won’t stop minding” as she delves into the intricate and intimate parts of the attentive self that witnesses “the stillness, the windless calm” and the “heartbreak indigo.” The poet finds solace even in the midst of confusion or the aftermath of loss. “A walk is a poem,” Grotz offers, “So is a grief.” Elsewhere, she writes beautifully on being depressed, asserting “I wasn’t indifferent, I was sinking./ I stared at nothing and heard my voice say,// just wait a little longer. I didn’t know/ which was me—the urging or the sinking.” “Earth’s the right place for love,” she declares at the end of “In Sicily.” Bestowing many moving and lyrical insights, this deserves to be read slowly and compassionately. (May)