Orexia

Award-winning poet Spaar follows up her darkly sparkling Vanitas, Rough with another example of her intent, luscious writing. Here, she focuses on life's waning and death itself—or, rather, the push back. "That voltage. How not die?" she asks in "Mynddaeg Hour," referencing the "old word/ for the year's turning." Though year's end, portending life's end, figures frequently—"I love you, December,/ your dusks iodine// as tea that scolds the water"—and we feel the sere touch of ice and sorrow, Spaar's very title suggests a continuing appetite for life and physical intimacy. "Is love the start of a journey back?" opens "Temple Gaudete," which ends with the declaration "Story that can save us only through the body." Indeed, the way Spaar layers tight, gorgeous, concrete language creates urgency while proposing a bright love of this world. That love is almost religious; there are many "temple" poems, for instance, and the imagery crackles with Christian iconography; the mere breaking of a wishbone conjures up the suggestion that "even a priest might commit/ the Virgin's statue to the flames."