Drift

REVIEWS

The book’s first section begins with a flummoxing series of sixteen line drawings. Mostly horizontal, sometimes partially crosshatched vertically or diagonally or developing into ovoid circles, they display gestures of line and smudge, redaction and emphasis, but no hint of alphabet. We find ourselves at the creative intersection of assertion and cross-out, musical staff lines awaiting notes, the exciting brink of language emerging from a lineated sea. —Dana Levin, Boston Review

Bergvall is not interested in safe: her work has always looked to “go deep down in time and in body, to bare bones,” challenging readers and listeners to do the same. —Sophie Mayer, the f word

It is a book as filled with ghosts as with beauty, as driven by intellect as by wanderlust—a richly rewarding and memorable experience. —Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Bergvall turns ‘illegibility’ on its head: she insists on a poetics that is neither merely read nor impossible to read. Instead, Bergvall attempts to offer another way of being, necessarily multiple. This affords space for unknowing, for the unrecognizable, where political vision and perhaps even political intimacy and solidarity does not require immediate recognition within our normative configurations of the sensible and knowable. —Rebecca Teich, The Poetry Project Newsletter

Love binds, love connects. And through Bergvall’s ongoing commitments, those bindings and connections are explored thoroughly and beautifully. Closing the trilogy, finding the last poem, contains a bit of heartache, a sighing wish for Bergvall to continue. But, in fact, I won’t be surprised if that’s indeed what happens, if Bergvall finds yet another extension to this ongoing work. As Alisoun says in the book’s final poem, “The era of ma tellings nat bygone, just bigonne.” As symbol, as voice, as voices, there is much yet to read, many more moments to listen. —Greg Bem, Rain Tax