"Tremulous with star-pulsed stanzas as patiently alchemical as they are spontaneously acrobatic, Paige Lewis' Space Struck is a playful parlor drama complete with meteorites, a gaggle of martyrs, the irradiated remains of factory women, and lines so dizzying—wishes so intoxicating, questions so eclipsing—you may even forget it's the twilight of the anthropocene, my dear, and the "universe is an arrow without end and it asks only one question: how dare you?" That wonder remains inextricable from the body of poetry is one of the more merciful facets of our culture. These poems, however, do more than just bear witness to wonder. They are the ore of wonder itself, mined and shaped by one of the most delightful, bewitching, and thoughtful voices I have ever encountered."
Publisher Sarabande Books
Publication Date 2019-10-08
Section New Titles - Paperback / Poetry / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Benjamin Q.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9781946448446
This glowing debut explores the wonders and cruelties occurring within nature, science, and religion. Its poems pulse like starlight.
This astonishing, self-assured debut leads us on an exploration to the stars and back, begging us to reconsider our boundaries of self, time, space, and knowledge. The speaker writes, “…the universe/is an arrow/without end/and it asks only one question;/How dare you?”
Zig-zagging through the realms of nature, science, and religion, one finds St. Francis sighing in the corner of a studio apartment, tides that are caused by millions of oysters “gasping in unison,” an ark filled with women in its stables, and prayers that reach God fastest by balloon. There’s pathos: “When my new lover tells me I’m correct to love him, I/realize the sound isn’t metal at all. It’s not the coins rattling/ on concrete, but the fingers scraping to pick them up.” And humor, too: “…even the sun’s been sighing Not you again/when it sees me.” After reading this far-reaching, inventive collection, we too are startled, space struck, our pockets gloriously “filled with space dust.”
