Starfish

With linguistic precision and visual dexterity, Starfish explores the bottomless depths of human intimacy and loss, reconciled against the vastness of the ocean and infinity of the cosmos. What if we had to pick: "The ocean or the stars. / A reputation in truth telling or a prize in diplomacy?" ("Elements of Style"). At times rendered through the perception of a "year-rounder" residing in a tourist locale, its poems offer close-up portraits of individuals bounded by shorelines yet attuned to expansive horizons. Alert to how elemental symbols delight as well as unsettle us, the book as a whole weighs the ceaseless negotiation of our actions against the limits of temporality.