Rise in the Fall

The poems in Ana Bozicevic's collection, Rise in the Fall, are stupendously, achingly beautiful. They carry a range of emotional content, poetic sensibilities, and intellectual subjectivities -- there is so much there, yet the lyric voice has an identity, or integrity, throughout. It holds as a whole in a way that is itself holding. That is, these poems may be provocative at times, they may contain confrontational or biting moments, but there is a presence throughout that never quite releases the reader from the loveliness of its poetic embrace.

My copy of Rise in the Fall is now marked up with so many underlinings of the gorgeous language -- I couldn't keep my pen away from the phrasing and beautiful moments.

Such as:

"On the Christmas of my death when
I swam by myself in the peeling
blue of the pool, and
the pines addressed me, saying:
take me to the riot"

or:

"I'll stand here and look at you
and invent nothing"

and:

"I thought I was supposed to be
Well-oiled. I though there's something
In toothpaste that wakes us up."

and:

"Oh I'm too tired to worship at your kittenish emptiness."

These excerpts to not quite capture the power of the poems in their entirety, all of which burst with energy, imagery, masterful language.

This collection is illustrated, hauntingly, by Bianca Stone. These images add an otherworldy virility to the text.