Poetry. In a clear-cut voice "as simple as ink," Mathias Svalina's THE WINE-DARK SEA vocalizes the urge to write oneself alive. Through this lyric journal of taut poems, each titled The Wine-Dark Sea, Svalina breathes life into overlooked places: the driveway a car turns into at the end of a workday, how a tree holds the dirt, the edge of a page on which "I'd always assumed / I'd die alone." Every poem is a baffled drop, a pulse trying not to be dead, and beneath the spine of each sentence, Svalina hides, carrying us, seeking an exit. It is impossible not to be stained by THE WINE-DARK SEA.