In the Lateness of the World

February 1, 2020

In her first new collection in 17 years, Forché (Blue Hour), who received an Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement in 2013, transports readers to faraway cities and islands and former and current war zones. Many poems exhibit an ethereal quality despite being grounded in the physicality of objects: "On the nativity tree, a tiny lute, a French horn and painted egg." Descriptions of past wars with their trails of graves bring the work to recent times, as do poems such as "The Boatman," which records a horrific sea crossing by immigrants not welcome anywhere. The writer also documents our damaged planet--"Motor scooters flock through the streets, a murmuration./ Crossing like starlings the skies. It is a matter of thirst"--with noatably long lines carrying the weight of her meaning. VERDICT Throughout her career, Forché has forged poems of witness, and she does so here with beauty and lyricism. The one misstep is an overabundance of list poems; Forché can bring to life objects better than nearly anyone, but we want the revelatory journey behind them. Yet, finally, this bounty of rich poetry is recommended for all collections.--Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 17, 2020
In her first collection in 17 years, Forché (Blue Hour) powerfully weaves poems of witness, a travelogue steeped in elegiac contemplation of life in Finland, Italy, Russia, and, most affectingly, Vietnam. These 41 poems vibrantly catalogue human artifacts and those of the natural world. In “Hue: From a Notebook,” she writes: “There was then the whir of stork wings, and bicycle chains ringing./ It is still now the way the air is still just before the mine explodes.// Once we fired at each other. Now we pass silence back and forth.” Throughout, the speakers are meditative but unflinching in the face of war’s aftermath and ecological crisis: “From here a dog finds his way through snow with a human bone... Even the clocks have run out of time.” “Museum of Stones” displays a delightedly crackling verbal texture reminiscent of poems by Seamus Heaney (“stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, hornblende,/ agate, marble, millstones, ruins of choirs and shipyards”). Such weights anchor Forche’s genuinely moving consideration of “ours and the souls of others, who glimmer beside us/ for an instant... radiant with significance,” communicating an urgent and affecting vision.