Little Stranger

In the prose poems constituting Lost Alphabet, an LJ Best Poetry of 2009 title (ow.ly/jYFh1), Olstein created a distinctive world that felt like the wilds of the Russian steppes. Here she uses verse to create another distinctive world, much like our own but somehow eerily off-kilter—a place where "Consumers will pay more/ for leather made from the skin// of an animal never bitten by mosquitoes," you must "Place your elevated heart/ rate in this prepaid, self-addressed,/ steel envelope," and surveys are "made with trains and shattered glass./ With dogs and tiny spoons." Despite the slightly surreal spookiness, the underlying anxiety is something we've all felt, as is the desire to connect ("I distill the world to the push-pull/ between us") that runs throughout this edgy, energizing work. From references to children ("Beneath the sky cage of my ribs,// a son practices breathing") to a group of elegies less plaintive than cutting ("It wasn't you,/ the hummingbird// unexpectedly in the yard"), these poems range over the human condition and take in the animal kingdom, too—deer with "velvet-gloved legs" abound.