The Radiant

Poems about celestial and mortal bodies.

The Radiant explores the psychological, physical, and spiritual challenges of living in a body and the changes and distortions that arise from the experience of the body’s limitations and inevitable death. The collection takes its title from the term for the point from which all meteors appear to emanate during a shower, luminous bodies in decay that when traced to their origin seem to converge at a single point. “Perhaps you can remember the time called before, the all-you-can-do-is-see-yourself-in-a-split-second where you recognize that everything you’ve ever known is going to be different after,” writes Goett in the collection’s final poem, “The Bookman,” recounting radiant points of no return and transformation that, in spite of their challenge, remain luminous.