The Elephant’s Mouth

Luke Stromberg is an autobiographical poet, but instead of being confined to the past, his best narratives deliver enough metaphoric lift to transmute them into poetry. I'm remembering his shadow being "a movie on the wall;" tombstones as "baby teeth;" and days that "pile up like dishes in the sink." The Elephant's Mouth is a noteworthy debut. -Billy Collins Imagine Philip Larkin pulling up a stool in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and you'd have a fair picture of Luke Stromberg's poems. Whether at home, in the classroom, or out on the streets of middle-class America, these speakers feel like spectators watching their own shadows "like a movie on a wall." Stromberg's formally dexterous poems explore family history, apocalyptic fantasies, thwarted lusts, and the acute agony of ordinary loneliness. "I feel like the understudy for myself," he writes in one poem. If you've ever felt like your own understudy-and honestly, who hasn't?-you should read this book. -Juliana Gray

Luke Stromberg is not afraid to place his head inside the elephant's mouth-such pluck, it turns out, is his birthright. His poems peer into the maw of threat and loss, disappointment and unhappy endings, while never wavering in their compassion for the beleaguered, never declaring themselves apart or above-perhaps the bravest act of all for a poet. In his humane portraits, the denizens of Upper Darby, PA (our semblables!) are "set apart for something special, / Blessed by [the] distinction" of being truly seen and, once seen, loved. A marvelous and heartbreaking debut! -David Yezzi