Blue Hunger

Initially, the poems in Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s in this collection show her keen eye for delivering the natural world. It’s tempting to think of her as a naturalist, but as her book progresses it becomes clear that, more broadly, she’s a human nature poet; poems of love and loss and community occur with the same acute precision. For example, in Awake at Night (one of her complicated love poems) she begins this way, I feel beautiful, young and dying / as the cricket song lifts and calls / and you are far away. No happiness / like this. The maples launch /their spinning seeds, such joy / in the deep air… All in all, a wonderful collection.

Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pagan Virtues