Light-Up Swan

<p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>All art constantly aspires</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Walter Pater claimed </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>towards the condition of music</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. The poems in Tom Snarsky's first full-length collection </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Light-Up Swan</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> are animated by twin forces: an abiding love of music and an equal fondness for the ghostly conversation engendered by quotation. With whimsy tempered by obsessive fascination the author unfolds an open dialogue with a private pantheon of musicians and poets both living and dead. These spectral encounters are staged on a far-reaching array of settings from oceans to virtual gamescapes starry canvases to comedy clubs. The speaker of the poems is by turns assured and uncertain: in one moment explaining a mathematical result from automata theory and in the next returning to youthful conflicts and preoccupations. </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Are we going in circles</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is a fair question for this cyclical book that wears its obsessions and anxieties on its sleeve but </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Light-Up Swan</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> moves towards a helical lift. Like a string of soft lights winding up a swan's neck these poems are composed of gentle details that welcome readers into a charmingly off-kilter world-once inside their curiosity will be rewarded by a warm and unusual sensibility that only Tom Snarsky can bring.</span></p>