There’s a sense that the speaker wants to return to an earlier time, too, a throwback feel to the pastoral scenes she sets and a need to shuck convention. In this follow-up to Apocalyptic Swing, a finalist for the Los Angeles Time Book Award, queer lesbian poet Calvocoressi uses the Dal Segno, a musical symbol directing the player to return to an earlier spot in the score, as a pronoun embodying “a confluence of genders” when referencing the Bandleader. The voice encompasses the colloquial as well as the high lyrical: “Oak leaves so full of late summer// sun even I thought, Obscene, and stood stunned/ for a moment.” When particular forms aren’t up to the task of rendering something with tender and unflinching attentiveness, Calvocoressi reaches outside of poetry altogether: “Oh. These poems balance wildness and control in a fearless treatment of eros, identity, trauma, and all that resists easy categorization. Calvocoressi resists the limitations of language-especially where gender is concerned-to more fully capture the experience of a self “unlimited in its possibilities.” The setting of her third collection is woodsy, nocturnal, and by turns sinister and merciful where “it did get dark” enough to see the stars “but how bright it was.” A range of characters compose a makeshift cast-or family-fluid enough to include a hermit, a cowboy, and a dowager.
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