That Winter the Wolf Came

In clear-spoken songs, this latest collection by critic and poet Spahr (This Connection of Everyone with Lungs) moves between poetry and prose as it inhabits the space of the “Non-Revolution.” Whether marching with a child in protests that approach riots or considering the lives of geese in the context of modern oil wars, Spahr’s attempts at understanding what to do in politically fraught times repeatedly return to the complicated project of simply understanding the times themselves. A poem in tight couplets, for instance, details in starkly affecting language the specifics of the explosion that initiated the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill: “Then drill pipe pressure high again. Then sea-/ Water is pumped. Kill line full. Kill line// Opened, bled to mini trip tank.” When the pieces become more internal than documentary, they maintain the same directness of thought: “We lost all the skirmishes, even the one called the PR war./ But that winter, we were there./ Under a tarp. Close. Together/ Just dealing with. Together. Went looking and found coyotes.” Beautiful and urgent, the pieces open up and allow the lyrical to inhabit logic, the political to become embodied. Spahr has been carefully developing a mode of writing over several books, and here it sings at its brilliant best. [em](Sept.) [/em]