Hope & Anchor

Those familiar with Corey’s previous books, Selah and Fourier Series, will find the same verbal splendor and tragicomedic cuts in Hope & Anchor. There are old, archetypal quests here—journeys across ancient seas, first flights, prodigal sons, and unsullied Edens. But in a departure from those earlier works, these prose poems also risk entering the deadly polemics of our time: the cost of oil, the deafness of power, the absorption of the avant-garde into the mainstream, fascism and aesthetic faction, and identity as cultural capital. Hope does come, but in the form of a carnal burlesque—a lyric tone like a tramp with a moustache “delivered to an idealism: no seashore.” These poems will put the folk back into folk music. If you don’t know what that means, learn by reading this provocative (and provoking) book.