The Do-Over

At the core of this third collection from Ossip (The Cold War) is a desire to perform elegy%E2%80%94to speak of and to the dead%E2%80%94and, in the process, to imbue a new luster to the world of the living. "The songs are all a pleasure," she writes, "and one day// we won't have the pleasure of breathing." There is a masterful control at play, a firm lyric that returns to the theme of death without suffocating or trivializing it; it's a voice that can be intimate and quiet as well as urgent. This two-fold approach is encapsulated neatly in her line: "But silence has a way of making you want to fill it." That crux%E2%80%94the need to perform elegy despite the fact that it will not and cannot literally bring back the dead%E2%80%94is the engine of the collection; the inability of the poet to remain silent while staring into silence. These tendencies are pushed further by the extent to which contemplating mortality becomes a self-reflexive and romanticizing process. In a gesture towards themes of re-birth, Ossip admits that "Of course we are/ endlessly/ fascinating to ourselves." But Ossip is neither selfish nor self-serving, rather she understands well how "Love triumphs/ over brutality// because brutality/ must end/ with death, and love// never does." (Feb.)