Man with Bombe Alaska

Loosely memoir-shaped and peopled by those close to the poet, Kate Behrens' second collection, Man with Bombe Alaska, travels between London, Turkey, Italy, Spain and the English countryside. The poems also map paths between states of mind and place or person, not to pin down experience with conclusions but for unexpected beauties, openings. Images are laden with metaphor but stand for themselves, at times with the kinds of heightened awareness arising from sudden shock. Behrens' language explores points of convergence where abstractions that seem to transcend the world merge with finely wrought detail in ways that release deep affect.