Riddles, Etc.

Poetry. In his debut collection, RIDDLES, ETC., Geoffrey Hilsabeck proves himself adept at paradox, a poet who reaches toward the largeness of the cosmos in order to bring its essence closer to us. Approaching his subjects with the difficult task of describing their spirit without naming it directly, this collection is also a love letter—Dear citizen stargazer—to the known and unknown. A singular imagination is at work here, writing toward the unique and peculiar qualities of things and beings, displaying the relative similarities of all phenomena.

Reader, let me ask you a riddle: What holds its breath in another’s mouth? What hides wind in leaves? What takes apart the Delphic know yourself and admits I don’t know? I don’t know. His riddles, etc., recognize that basic bewilderment which knowledge cannot rescue us from, and then he makes for us the world again, not by defining it, but by singing the wild, innocent song.—Dan Beachy-Quick

These riddles are poems ‘fearfully, and wonderfully made, ’ unabashedly lyrical—they’ve been hanging on, like psalms and rivers, ‘strange and unnecessary’ as the poet’s life. They ask the comfortably urgent questions that, back in the day, John Ashbery asked (with echoes of David Schubert): the kind that need no answer but are open to any. When you get past the making, perhaps all poems worth the name are really riddles, as only the tongue may turn back the clock so we may reconsider of what it is made.—Matvei Yankelevic