Lena: Poems

Cassie Pruyn’s Lena asks new questions: why we love, why we grieve. We'veread elegies before, but not like this. A lush and unsparing first book, Lenaasks readers to understand love-crucially, a first love, an erotic love-inthe context not of a love lost but instead of an identity gained: we must consider not only was she worth it?, but also who has she made me? Pruyn lets us feel what lovers feel-the magnetism, the physicality, the tenderness, the rage, the wondering-with language both musical and visceral. In these poems, the landscape is a character in itself; the past is as tangible as the present. Pruyn takes us to the Lost Love Lounge, we ride in a car / red as a dragon, and we observe the beloved stick herself in the belly with a needle in the way she used to attach her cufflinks. This is love and grief raised to the highest power; it is a debut not to be missed.