August 19, 2024
In this propulsive fourth collection, Novak (New Life) explores the intersection of domestic life, new parenthood, and anorexic impulses, while enacting the tyrannical confines of the postpartum mind. The poems are agitated, full of sonic chatter as they make sense of the quotidian. “Highboy” asks, “What if simplicity saves nothing?/ If my monochrome chant is a red grunt?” Indeed, it is through wordplay that the book steadies itself, a kind of parish house of sound where the poet finds “all day long, the spread of history, goodness, the morning made me hungry, unstable, and talky.” Much of this talk is channeled into litanies that attempt to control food and feelings, as in the muscular and quirky “Abundance”: “making much of little ribbon brisket/ knish gnocchi/ rubber carrot,/ latex bone/ I chalked/ the rabbet day/ O Dei, sick present coughing blood carnations.” Beyond the purview of home, “the rules of dividends cracks sidewalks, slanting the historic district,” while inside, there are dinner parties to attend to. Thanks to Novak’s vivid language, these pages overflow with life’s complexities, terrors, and fragmentations.