In Building Alexandria, a premier full-length poetry collection from Clarissa Adkins, texture meets metaphor in an array of voices, from retrospective to vulnerable philosopher. Clarissa warps American ideals and idiosyncrasies, reshaping them through surreal shifts in perspective. At times the narrator appears a close-up observer and at others, a distant seeker. Word play and multi-layered reflections surprise the reader, and despite the variety of poems from one to the next, develop the nuance of the book’s title.