The Inevitable Return of What We Do Not Love

<p class=ql-align-justify>Like the best songs Julie Choffel's <em>The Inevitable Return of What We Do </em>Not Love is a poem fueled by desire. To have so many / ways to say I want is dangerous and selfish we've heard: we should be content; we should be grateful. But women are never / not hungry Choffel's mother-speaker insists aware that her life plays out as two tracks in the same song-the material world of meals and routines as well as the imaginative realm. Poetry is this parallel universe these other zones this floor / under the garbage these subterranean places where we meet to tend to different hungers. In Choffel's hands these spaces bloom with deep seeing and wry humor: there I go / again   trying to liberate us   from what   we don't know. The poem becomes a vehicle for satisfying its own longings a gift then passed along to us as readers-so that we too might dance to such a soundtrack in our kitchens and in the otherworlds that envelop the everyday. If you're willing to risk being brought back to your own desires enter <em>The Inevitable Return.</em></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>-Becca Klaver</strong></p>