Eternity & Oranges

Wed not slept in days, or else we were/ still sleepingwho could tell? someone asks in the opening poem of <i>Eternity & Oranges.</i> The voices we encounter in this book speak on the verge of disappearance, from places marked by disintegration and terror. Christopher Bakkens poems are acts of conjuring. They move from the real political landscapes of Greece, Italy, and Romania, into more surreal spaces where history comes alive and the summoned dead speak. In the formally diverse long poem, Kouros/Kore, but also in this books terse and harrowing dream songs, Bakken writes with devastating force, at every turn Guilty of the crime of praise while begging for an antidote to beauty.