A Brief Conversation with Consciousness

Marc Vincenz’s newest book of poems is a call and response-a call issued by a lyric self to a natural world that frequently yields pieces as an answer-a feather, a skull, a tail-detail that somehow speaks more fully than a complete creature. The base coat of these poems is a voice that both issues commands to itself and observes, an imperative that stands balanced on short lines and inside compact stanzas. In this collection, animals ‘burrow into subterranean airports’ and a sparrow is a ‘bundle / Of good intention, holds its head well.’ There’s a chemical reaction between language and line, musicality and image. Persuasion and wingtips coexist, along with maggots and questions. Large interactions abound, such as how the sea and sky ‘catch up at the end of the day’ when the ‘sun says grace.’ The non-human has a stockpile of agency in a world where, as Vincenz says, ‘the tangible is all that counts.’
-Alexandria Peary, Poet Laureate of New Hampshire