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About
Foxglovewise is, at its core, a response to the singular experience of the loss of one's parents. It begins at an Eastern Orthodox Epiphany ritual in Florida and ends in a cemetery in Los Angeles. Yet, as with Ange Mlinko's other books of poetry, the collection uses geography as a trope for the ways in which we try to map out our lives and make them legible, even as poetry, music, and paintings suggest that much of what happens, or matters, to us is “not on the maps” (not to mention “the apps”). Whether it's Europa borne over the waves, or gravestones bearing aliases rather than birth names, or books bequeathed to us by relatives in languages we can't read, we live “up in the air” or “on the wing” and not in fixed coordinates.
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Reviews
"The lushness is late romantic; these poems' 'vintage is Keatsian,' loading every rift with ore. . . . This is a big and imposing book, worldly wise but warmly open and giving."
David Wheatley, The Guardian
"Mlinko is rarely less than dazzling thanks to the pleasure and rigor of her phrasing. . . layered, allusive, and intelligent poems. . . . There is a moving and unignorable sense of grief and loss beneath the surface, in an expertly managed balance with the luster of the vocabulary and music of these poems."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mlinko delivers again on the promise of a richly rewarding smorgasbord of sound, image, feeling, and thought."
Diego Báez, Booklist