WhetherAligned with the mechanismwhereby the spirit is borne aloftthrough song comes againthe question: whether. And not soothedso much as opened by the boysoprano's Sanctus, what movesin the mind as the throat constrictsin sympathy, one note peeledfrom the last, fine as paper slippedfrom a garlic bulb, veined, translucent, is whether-as ifwound through the spiralingamplitude, purpled, fretted, one voice suspendedin concentration of prayer or terrorwills itself above faltering, more perfect since time mustsoon break it. And made it.Whether and by whatever impossiblearrangement of stars,...

WhetherAligned with the mechanismwhereby the spirit is borne aloftthrough song comes againthe question: whether. And not soothedso much as opened by the boysoprano's Sanctus, what movesin the mind as the throat constrictsin sympathy, one note peeledfrom the last, fine as paper slippedfrom a garlic bulb, veined, translucent, is whether-as ifwound through the spiralingamplitude, purpled, fretted, one voice suspendedin concentration of prayer or terrorwills itself above faltering, more perfect since time mustsoon break it. And made it.Whether and by whatever impossiblearrangement of stars,...

Haunting and haunted, "The River Won t Hold You" interrogates loneliness and loss with quiet insistence. In poems fashioned at the difficult intersection of imagination and experience, Karin Gottshall seeks an uneasy solace in the mysterious gaps between them: I tell myself I can be content with the pleasures / permitted ghosts, she writes in Afterlife, but my body wakes up / leaking saltwater, and won t let my ghost-self be. Poetic structure and the music of language offer a seductive repository for memory, philosophy, and pain. These poems are generous in both their formal approaches and...