Harbinger: Poems

Nearly every poem in this National Poetry Series winner from Puhak (Guinevere in Baltimore) is titled with a close variant of the phrase “Portrait of the Artist,” yet what widely different journeys each takes us on, from the first scares of motherhood (“A child too perfect// calls to the knife. Hallelujah the birthmark, the extra digit”) to love (“I carried/ water for you, the one for whom the world’s/ aqueducts/ were not conduit enough”). Puhak scores frissons with many of her unusual and striking comparisons (“your hidden musculature/ you’re lashed to the mast of my bone-ship”) and is not averse to addressing world problems; at a dinner party, “The guests arrive when the flames start./ We draw the curtains/ …While the city burns, while the algae blooms, while the oceans froth acrid.” These poems share a deep curiosity about and connection to our world, good and bad, majestic and dystopian. Some are uplifting, while others deepen our pain about tragedies from shooter drills to ancestors’ forced relocations. Yet even at their most troubling, the quirky humor provides some respite.