Review of Kate Behrens, Penumbra

My review of Kate Behrens’s latest collection Penumbra (Two Rivers Press, 2019) is up at Empty Mirror. Here is a brief snippet:

Numerous birds appear in this collection. What are they? Messengers, transmigrating spirits perhaps, and/or real birds. One particular bird poem that I like a lot here is “Thrush.” The thrush in this poem is perhaps the thrush in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring,” only now the “same just older thrush, / thrust upwards from sheer. . . / sheerer. . .” (Behrens’s deployment of ellipses is perhaps a revival of a usage that seemed to have gone out of fashion). There is a similar kind of intense soundplay to Hopkins (“thrush”/“thrust”) and a similar attempt to grasp a fleeting joy—Behrens’s poem ends with the thrush’s return, provoking “Ebullience. It wipes us out.”

The full review can be read here:

https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/reviews/penumbra-kate-behrens-review