Earthwhere

Earnest missives addressed to a lyric “you” touch on a series of disasters—a fire, a partner’s health scare, a lost baby—in this attentive offering from Illich (Fingerspell). Poems documenting a middle-aged mother’s desperation—“I’m an hour from turning forty/ three & trying to pretend people aren’t/ out there dying”—juxtapose with those speculating on the nature of time: “What is time but the greenbloom/ and these stars beat into seafloor.” Occasionally Illich strains for a metaphor, as in “Disaster Euphoria”: “every seamstress knows/ It’s the selvage that keeps the self together.” But “Aubade,” which describes a lovers’ interlude before an awaited diagnosis, is razor-sharp: “Our sex a paperknife/ holding our place in the book of/ before we knew.” While the poems sometimes name their influences (“after Marie Howe,” “after Maggie Smith”), in “Dear Kerrie,” readers are left in the dark about the identities of those she’s quoting: “At the reading last night, R said that the unspoken last line of every poem is I am going to die. It made me think of Harvard and then of you. At Harvard I heard/ M say that all poems say Thank you or I love you or Help. Which is also the entire Beatles discography. Which makes me wonder what’s the point?” Despite its engaging tone, the collection’s occasional diffuseness may alienate some readers. (June)