WHEN THE REFUGE GOES AWRY

Vexations by Annelyse Gelman

DAN BEACHY-QUICK

Books Vexations by Annelyse Gelman University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Poets, 2023 paperback, 56 pages, $18.00 Maybe the world should end as it began, in verse recited by a poet. Homer in a folding chair staring blindly at the sea, Troy’s towers burning behind his eyes. Twins of the Popol Vuh. Gilgamesh and Beowulf. Verse around which our notion of what a world might be is woven. In a day and age in which apocalyptic novels and shows dominate our attention, Annelyse Gelman’s Vexations reminds me, across 1320 lines of brilliant verse, that a poem—built whole by enjambment’s continual breakage, that knows A no longer leads to the easy logic of B then C—alone is the form that can tell us this story: the story of an end. Vexations is a book-length…

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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, September/October 2023

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