Moving and Street Rage

Kathy Fagan’s long awaited second collection keeps revealing new strengths, new powers. Its words are of unsparing rigor; its intelligence and vision continually spring forward in changed ways. These are poems both revealing and resistant: deeply felt, deeply communicative, yet avoiding any easy lyricism. Again and again the reader pauses, astonished by some fresh turn of language, of insight, of terrain. MOVING & ST RAGE offers extraordinary pleasures, clarities, and depth. –Jane Hirshfield

From the first emblems of language–the angular letters of A and K–a child steps toward the preservation of consciousness, and, in turn, the paradox of preserving that which is lost. These beautifully crafted poems trace a journey to adulthood and grief with a lyrical mastery that is breathtaking. What can language do with loss? Fagan asks. This splendid book is her answer. –Linda Bierds

California, She Replied

It’s driving into all that goldness makes
You blind, she said. The road oats, timothy,

The mustard hung beside the highway like
So many crowns thrown out, she said. That ma-
Ma cow who cools her thin blond ankles in
A shiny ditch? Her baby’s bones hurt–it’s
The newness. Poplars, too, they have their secrets
With each other. Seen them at it in my
Rearview, whisperin where the smoke trees get to
Once the mist’s burnt off. Why, I was in a
‘Nother country by the time I knew, myself,

Where I live comfortably, to this day,
She ended, without question.