My Florida in Bloomington, MN

Kathleen Tyler's Florida is a wild and terrifying place, a savage place-but "what was savage, I adored," she tells us. And so these poems are full of the deepest kind of heartbreak, too, the kind of heartbreak that's irreparable. "Death cures of our terror/of death," Tyler writes, "What cure is there for the terror of love?" In My Florida, a hubcap scuds across the road, a child hides under an ironing board while her mother is beaten, a heron with orange eyes feasts on hatchling alligators, and a girl swings a bag of snakes tied with a pink, satiny ribbon, asking, "Oh, whose porch can I leave it on?" Tyler's poems are often shocking, always brave, and bravely, shockingly beautiful.
Cecilia Woloch