a Year & other poems

<p><strong>From the celebrated author of <em>feeld</em> comes a formally commanding third collection dexterously recounting the survival of a period suffused with mourning.</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Jos Charles's poems communicate with one another as neurons do: sharp charged in language that predates language. A scandal / three cartons red / in a hedge / in / each the thousand eye research of flies. With acute lyricism she documents how a person endures seemingly relentless devastation-California wildfires despotic legislation housing insecurity-amid illusions of safety. I wanted to believe Charles declares a corner a print leaned to / a corner can save / a people. Still the house falls apart. Death visits and lingers. Belief proves again and again that belief alone is not enough.</p><p><br></p><p>Yet miraculously one might still manage to seek-propelled by love or hope or sometimes only momentum-something better. There is a place where there are no futile longings no persistent institutional threats to one's life. Poems might take us there; tenderness too as long as we can manage to keep moving. A current / gives as much as it has writes Charles-despite fire despite loss.</p>