A Sand Book
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Deadpan, epic, and searingly charismatic, A Sand Book is at once relatable and out-of-this-world. In poems tracking climate change, bystanderism, state murder, sexual trauma, shopping, ghosting, love, and the transcendent shock of prophecy, A Sand Book chronicles new dimensions of consciousness for our strange and desperate times.
What does the destruction of our soil have to do with the weather in the human soul? From sand in the gizzards of birds to the iridescence on the surface of spilt oil, from sand storms on Mars to our internet-addicted present, from the desertifying mountains of Haiti to natural disasters and state violence, A Sand Book is both a travelogue and a book of mourning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The fourth book from Reines (Mercury) is ambitious in its scope and artistic vision, offering a postmodern take on the epic poem. Like some of the major long-form poets who have preceded her, among them H.D., Lorine Niedecker, and Adrienne Rich, Reines inhabits and renegotiates the space of the long poem. This sprawling book in 12 parts considers Hurricane Sandy, the mountains of Haiti, and Twitter, offering conceptually interesting passages and a wholly original response. Despite these strengths, the poems in this volume occasionally traffic in abstraction, failing to ground vague concepts in sensory detail: "Many of us had succumbed to quivering/ Idiocy while others drew vitality from careers." Throughout the book, Reines's enjambments heighten the sense of irony that characterizes her approach to the feminist epic. She writes, for example: "Nothing she meant to make a big/ Deal of, only some tiny budging/ Of memory." The poems operate primarily on the level of ideas, rather than through lyrical language, though the speaker's deadpan tone does not always succeed in creating the sense of momentum needed to propel the reader through this textual landscape. Correction: A previous version of this review referred to the book as "a nine-part poem" when it is in fact a book in 12 parts.
