Nervous System

Starred review from November 18, 2019
Winner of the National Poetry Series, the contemplative second book from Moffett (June in Eden) sifts through one pivotal event—the poet’s mother’s brain injury after a fall—and how its repercussions rippled across the years that followed. Conscientiously associative, the poem features recurring symbols that represent the event, most significantly the spider, whose web is like the nerves of the brain, “a meshwork of silk rope bridges.” Other themes include vegetation, light and vision set against dark and blindness (she describes her mother as “the one who once shielded me in her body like a lit match”), and memory and dreams. Moffett’s cadence is effortlessly elegant; even her description of head trauma is achingly beautiful: “This, with/ a ringing like what, when shaken, the dead/ lightbulb makes.” Though never morose, the book is suffused with grief as the poet mourns a piece of her mother that is gone and uses that experience to prepare for a later, more final grief, whenever it may come: “the me who’s been/ smoothing a spot in my mind for years, like a dog/ turning in circles.” Moffett creates order out of the chaos in this radiant collection, cataloging the known and unknown into a coherent story for both the reader and herself.

November 1, 2019

A bicycle accident suffered by Moffett's mother and her subsequent progressive dementia were at the heart of Moffett's first collection, June in Eden, winner of the 2016 Ohio State University Press Poetry Prize. Moffet's latest title (chosen by Monica Youn for the National Poetry Series 2018) also concerns that tragic situation but expands to include another unfortunate episode in her mother's life--the death of Moffett's twin sister while in the womb. Using the term arachnoid mater (a part of the brain and spinal cord) as a jumping-off point for free association, this book offers one long poem prefaced by a relatively short introductory piece, with both relying on enjambment and written in haiku-like, three-line stanzas. Moffett quickly establishes the work's central metaphor: a spider whose silk sac is separated from her and who spends her life trying unsuccessfully to reclaim her loss. In one exquisite image, she notes the "holy moments/ where light strikes/ a misted web." VERDICT The story is built around Moffett's standing outside her mother's hospital room thinking about her before and after dementia through "these images," which she wistfully describes as "Filling in/ what isn't there." Highly recommended for all libraries.--C. Diane Scharper, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD

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