The Intangibles

July 15, 2019
“I write because certain combinations of words really are magical,” Equi explains in her enchanting 14th collection. Her signature quirkiness and alien perspectives on the quotidian (including T-shirts, rhubarb and radishes, and poems built from the “invisible architecture” of scents) make appearances, and, as in previous volumes, many of these poems are written in response to modern technology: “Once upon a time, everything was not/ connected to everything else... People knew too/ how to inhabit a moment,/ even while daydreaming,/ all the way to the far edges.” “Deep in the Rectangular Forest” offers a slightly ominous look at post-internet, post-social-media behavior and the role individuals play in this technological habitat: “we pollinated the mostly mediocre content/ with an innocuous brand of wit.// Left to our own devices, we’d eavesdrop/ on conversations around the world./ If something was unpleasant, we deleted it.” These poems suggest people should enjoy the fun of language while it lasts, before it’s “ground to numeric sand” and “the rabbit/ of the alphabet/ drops back/ into the void/ of the black hat.” Like her “Monogrammed Aspirin”—in which E is for both Excedrin and Elaine—Equi’s poems are easy-to-swallow capsules, so filled with ideas that, occasionally, they feel curtailed, as though they could have gone on longer.