Midwood

July 1, 2022

Currently executive editor of the New York Review of Books, Guggenheim fellow Prikryl offers a distinctive voice and worldview in her third book (following No Matter). In the tradition of Emily Dickinson, the best poems depict the world at a slant ("Out of the garment/ of the land-- trees and their upholstery"), and poems about love, travel, childhood, and nature abound, with a series of poems each titled "The Noncello" focusing mainly on a river in Italy. A longer string of poems provides continuity to the collection in its celebration of forests, but too many of these poems end flatly ("They're good at being trees"). Throughout, occasional run-on phrases interrupt the general flow, and some metaphors draw attention to themselves with their odd connections (or lack thereof): "Wood-paneled basement like the inside of a tree for delinquent dads." VERDICT The mostly short poems featured here often exhibit lively, inviting language, but too many of the poems focus on description, leaving readers hungry for more narrative, more emotion, or the zinging of Prikryl's best poems. Recommended for larger public libraries and some university collections.--Doris Jean Lynch

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Starred review from August 15, 2022
Womanhood, motherhood, and trees are studied by the gimlet eye of Prikryl’s speaker in this powerful collection (after No Matter). Her keen observations are unsurpassed, interweaving corporeal details with otherworldly imagery, as in “Window Seat”: “musicians grouped on street corners/ playing electrified songs for almost no one/ the dream pressing in as bald as the moon.” The descriptions of trees are particularly strong, tuning into their physical appearance, their response to subtle changes in the air and seasons, and the inner worlds they might contain. A gust of wind, for instance, and “you feel/ for a moment the rustling in lindens, oaks, sycamores/ as they sense what’s been withheld/ for months, that’s when the mature ones/ rustle it off, slip almost/ sexily out of that dress.” Most moving are her reflections on fertility, as in “Alma Mater”: “I line up my stories, not having a child/ the worst thing that nearly happened to me/ and it happened for years, I couldn’t see the moon/ in the sky without shooting dirty looks but once arrived/ the boy the most arduous exacting work/ I couldn’t have done it alone.” These poems are short but deceptively impactful, disarming the reader with their candor and emotional depth.