Song of Songs: A Poem

I hold on to everything. Will you please help me let go? …

This is what makes sense to me. Nothing else does. You’re the only one I want to talk to. You’re the only one I like talking to. You are the only one who understands me. You are the only one who makes me make sense. Even though I never make sense. But you know.

In the spirit of the biblical Song of Solomon, Song of Songs, Sylvie Baumgartel’s powerful debut, takes the subjects of love and worship, of power and submission, and brings them to the desperate, wild spaces of the speaker’s domestic life. With a voice at once precise and oneiric, Baumgartel explores the landscapes of sex and desire in this groundbreaking book-length poem.