Corset

I've awaited this book of poems for years, and now it's finally published! Shannon Borg's first published book of poetry is now available and as soon as I learned it had been published, I eagerly requested a review copy from the publisher. This book contains 43 collected poems, some from the author's dissertation and others that were originally published in a variety of poetry journals, and these poems are divided fairly evenly between three separate parts in the book. Despite the wide variety of topics explored in these poems, they all focus on the one immutable aspect of life; everything is subject to change. All of Shannon Borg's poems are wistful, humorous and audacious by turns, and all of them speak beautifully, eloquently, of family and life and love; of their prerequisite constraints and entanglements, and their enduring promise. For example, in the title poem, "Corset", she tells of seduction's familiar (and amusing) dance; "He moves close, says hello, you remind / me of someone, can't quite place. Your face, your / look, don't quite know. Drinks and scents float / between, across, amongst." The author's poems are acutely sensitive to several worlds. One of my favorite poems is a stream-of-consciousness piece, "In the Old Peculiar Near the End of the Century" (p. 86-87), where the author ponders the constraints of friendship, of gender, of social expectations while lingering over beer with her friends. In "During the War", she carefully reveals her parents' parallel lives prior to their marriage; he, an overseas soldier while she buried soldiers at home. Another poem describes the juxtaposition between her father's open heart surgery and herself as she was driving through the crowded streets of a large city a thousand miles away; "I see the surgeon's red hands while I steady / the steering wheel's ring. My father moves through / the post-op dreams they told him would come, followers / of pain. He wonders if he should keep his eyes closed / and I wonder why I want to give the moon a soul / like mine. Why this desire to gaze down on myself / at night, navigating streets between skyscrapers / or red desert streams? The freeway speeds / away beneath my car. The drive home promises / to be long - the roads are full, empty, full." [from "On a Table Under a Round White Light" (p. 47)] Even though some poems in this collection are clearly romantic, others are overtly scientific in their focus, such as the first poem in the book, "In the Hour of Eyes". This multi-part poem meticulously describes Eadweard Muybridge's photographic analyses of animal movement, seeking to capture that perfect but fleeting moment when his subjects were free of all earthly bonds, when they were finally soaring at last. Borg's poems also reflect the ephemeral constantly changing aspect of nature and of life; cautioning the reader about the necessary separation (alienation?) that results when one tries to capture and understand the world; "There is no thing that is