Samsara

Anzalone’s haunting sense of sound reverberates throughout this book, adding shadows and nuances to her startling images and glimpses of narrative. Rangy and always deeply engaged, this is a poetry of deft yet wild shifts, of ripening nimbuses and hummed haloes, and yet it’s also very much of the world, as its title implies. The body and its darknesses, the news and its violences, all are frankly accepted with an open honesty that rings through her language, affirming the bright triumph that is the determination to live it all as deeply as possible. A vibrant debut!

These are poems that represent a fight against self, against other, and against a patriarchal society that attempts to, both directly and indirectly, silence the speaker’s voice. Samsara is nothing less than a feminist feat—one that—with both remarkable bluntness—both simultaneously embraces and laments the heaviness of its own “medusa head.”