From Publishers Weekly
More interested in the generative possibilities of questions than in their answers, the well-crafted, rangy free-verse lyrics of Hartigans Colorado Prize–winning debut obliquely interrogate humanitys relationships with larger forces, both natural and man-made, as well as notions of love and motherhood. Nature itself is reshaped simply by virtue of mans way of looking at it: Here the animals/ weve plucked/ from books or fields, [are] placed// into our hearts/ like lanterns. The thrilling title poem, a cascade of meticulously described actions and things, views many created objects as though they are part of nature, equating One bus arriving with blue and black windows with One goldfish darting six inches. Yet amid all this transformation, a sense of paralysis surfaces, as if seeing beyond appearances merely reveals other appearances. Fans of Jorie Graham will find much that is familiar—and much to like—in Hartigans careful lines and obsessive, off-center observations. Hartigan distinguishes herself from her peers—she shares with many young poets a hip penchant for fragmentation and elliptical imagery—with her careful eye (Wood chips/ burning/ by the pharmacy) , her ear for the ways soft and sharp sounds make music together (one leaf from among/ the accumulate of leaves), and her earnest search for One voice rising and falling in one chorus. (Nov.)
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"Here is a vision of, a vision in, rather than a vision beyond the world, a poetry whose accuracy is humbly undercut by the recognition that the world is always larger than the poem. Here is a poetry whose faith is in something not merely itself. The world is experiential before it is textual. In between those two points, Hartigan's poems do their work, ensuring that what has been seen once, in its singular wonder, remains to be seen again. The page pushes its root down into the world, into the fact of the world, the fact that the world is--and that fact has a sheen, has a music. Hartigan hears that music. She hears it, and she lets the facts sing their terrestrial song." --Dan Beachy-Quick, author of A Whaler s Dictionary
, and North True South Bright