Midwood: Poems

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.”