Headwaters: Poems

This collection explores the succession of the natural world, along with the habits and characteristics of all living things—the similarities we share, our fears, intentions, and routines. Every poem is charged with startling, unapologetic undertones that are completely transfixing. There’s a fluency throughout, as punctuation is omitted next to themes of solitude, heaviness, and the act of leaving and being left. The pace relates a kind of dormant burning that gradually gives way to an urgent craving for destruction.

The juxtaposition of veiled, buried thoughts and fervent, undeniable imagery creates this disheartening feeling by the end of each poem, as if too much has happened and my understanding—of loss and the inevitable discarding we do, the constant abandoning of our own layers—will always be belated. It is as if every conclusion is actually an introduction, inducing a sense of ceaseless contemplation. The author writes at the edge of things, and I can feel the liberation. Every sentence is expectant and unobstructed, composed of smart and provoking word choices. The way this poet sees our gritty, tangled world challenges the common misconception that there’s permanence to death, to relationships, or to anything.