Sometimes Full of Daylight

<p class=ql-align-justify><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(16 16 15 1)>Sometimes Full of Daylight</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(16 16 15 1)> the debut full-length collection of poetry by Owen Lewis asks us to embark on a</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(16 16 15 1)>journey through a life-we begin with the walls wanting to fall in hit by all the storms at once and from there we</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(16 16 15 1)>find ourselves everywhere from the schoolyard where the boy is tinder to family births and deaths divorce and</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(16 16 15 1)>the love that comes after. </span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>Lewis' deftness in juxtaposition continuously brings the quotidian image to life whether as</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>a glimmer of hope or a swift devastation: How the family felt / your leaving? We waited. // A bank of votive</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>candles twisting in light.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>In Bellagio the long poem at the center of the book the speaker confronts a statue of Dante asking Are you</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>lonely / in your myths of love? Aimed at both the past and the future this question echoes throughout the</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>collection. Here air and water and stone / become ideas and the words for love are syllables belonging to no</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>language. Many of the poems are rooted in nature both in its serenity and its storms. We come across the last</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>azalea and a sea of slow mourning anemones but in the turmoil of the human experience the ex-boyfriend</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>beating her / into a swollen bruised sponge the speaker seeks refuge in the natural world the lake fog in the late</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>morning clearing. Again and again Lewis reminds us that we can be sometimes full of daylight even as we are</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 26 1)>starved / for things of the earth that go beyond the earth.</span></p><p></p>