Sunderland

<p><strong>Pritchett's poems manage a level of lyric statement that recalls both Rilke's Duino Elegies and the late poems of Robert Creeley as the author asks May I ruin the poem's / promise with the promise / of another poem / the yet-to-come / forever shining / nickel sweet beyond / horizon's oblivion. Written under the sign of COVID and the attendant global violences related to a pandemic Sunderland meditates in ardent necessary and ethical ways on the real wonder of the world in its ruin. Both a work of daily apprehension and one sundered from topical realities Pritchett's work here is invested in poetry's requisite and long-historied demand asking us to undergo lyric / as though it were a curse.</strong></p>