Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You

Do we slight desire when we say crush? No, Lea Graham seems to answer, we praise it. Less like a reservoir of recollection than a synaptic centrifuge, Hough & Helix spins and strains the blood rush of our days and words until all that remains is their compacted essential elemental charge—the poems flash and flirt on the page, surging like the “million tiny lightening storms” within us. In playfully fresh language and crisp images, this speaker collapses time and space, elegy and ode, as Latinate diction beds down with slang. A raw sexuality and emotion—think Brando and Elvis and The Venus of Willendorf—haunt the collection the way Wayne C. Booth haunts The Craft of Research. —Kathleen Graber