Mistaking the Seas for Green Fields: Poems

In her first book, Ashley Capps sounds like the voice of a fresh generation of poets, where the familiar turns suddenly elliptical, straight talk goes engagingly crooked, and the lyric negotiates with the matter-of-fact. Desperate for something solid to believe in, Capps still mistrusts authority, feeling disenchanted with God, family, eros, even her own impulsive self. And yet while the absence of faith hints at despair, these poems often achieve, almost inspire of themselves, an odd buoyancy. Playful, fearless, wary, there’s a dazzling resilience in this book. One poem can make a grand and eccentric claim, I forgive the afterlife , while another takes as its title something humbler and more poisonous, God Bless Our Crop-Dusted Wedding Cake . No matter how adrift this poet may feel, poetry itself remains her anchor and lifeline.