A. E. Stallings reviewed by Adam Kirsch

Adam Kirsch's review of A. E. Stallings's Hapax concludes with a brief and beautiful discussion of the winner of my Daily Poem Project, "Fragment":

"When Stallings writes about shattering emotion, as in 'Fragment,' she does not use 'I' even once, preferring to give herself wholly over to the metaphor of a dropped glass:

It breaks because it falls
Into the arms of the earth—that grave attraction.
It breaks because it meets the floor’s surface,
Which is solid and does not give. It breaks because
It is dropped, and falls hard, because it hits
Bottom, and nobody catches it."

(I should mention that Kirsch's review begins with a review of The Optimist by Joshua Mehigan, before getting to Stallings's book.)