Saint X

Kirk Nesset’s Saint X chronicles the muted joy and despair of a millennial age, charting love’s ills and the grind of mortality. His figures are bizarre but familiar: people born under punches, shaken awake by rattles and flares, latter-day pilgrims who stare at the statue that stares at America; people for whom disobedience is still a first duty, and death but a question of style. Wearing bandages rather than smiles, they’re misshapen champions downed by self-bludgeons, perversely on foot while the saddled horse follows-and yet in each case, in each poem, they are honoured if not saved by nuanced reflection, measured perception, and the pleasures of song.