Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return

The bright and speculative latest from CAConrad (Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration) delivers poems whose forms reflect their interest in organic processes: “A voice told me in a dream that my poems were now spirits of animals. I saw them moving across the page, looking for something to eat, investigating the edges of the paper where they found themselves trapped.” They rely on a (Soma)tic poetry ritual to build their poems, which undulate down the middle of the page, resembling mushrooms and sprouts with smooth edges that curve like shells or leaves. Foregoing punctuation, CAConrad’s writing requires a heightened focus, offering a gentle reminder to “retire the invisible/ arm reaching in and/ out of our attention.” These pieces respond to the need to stop mourning, the “need to fall in love again with the world as it is, not as it was.” It might be a stretch to say the collections is hopeful, but as the speaker asserts, “enough poems have been/ wasted on human cruelty/ we dig hard to/ find the/ other/ world.” There is still time, CAConrad suggests, to “learn how/ to live so/ wilderness/ never/ becomes/ mythology.” As the climate crisis intensifies, these affecting and imaginative poems offer readers a space to reflect on what still remains. (Apr.)