Mary Biddinger

One of the consequences of my hair-trigger on pre-ordering books is that sometimes by the time the book arrives I have NO IDEA why I was so excited about it in the first place. Oftentimes, it's delightful to get to discover what it was — this thoughtful and surprising gift from my past-self. Sometimes though, it remains baffling, like in this case. I remember seeing a tweet about this book, and rushing to the publisher's website to pre-order... but, why?

While there was a lot that I liked here, there were also many poems that FELT like they wanted to be approachable but had jarring or obscure references that I bounced right off of. But I liked the vibes overall. My favorite poem from the collection was "More Beautiful Than God"

...the husband telling her she's more beautiful than god,

and hopefully neither of them has a background in baroque painting
where god resembles a heap of tube socks against a sharp nimbus.

But also, how can you not love this bit from "Book of Hard Passes"

We can only hope to become trade
paperbacks someday while the people who accused us of prose
with line breaks rather than truly liminal and enlightened verse
are still pissing against the same alley wall as in graduate school
hoping for different results.

… (mais)