Every Day but Tuesday

Every poem in this second collection from critic and poet Freeman (Incivilities) carries loss and negation. Even the title eliminates a day. This is a book full of silence, and lines that offer the reader hints at sounds only for them to remain absent. Voices go “unrecorded”; one poem contains a laugh track, but it’s delayed with a pregnant pause. These poems are mostly slim and efficient, with the chill of mechanical landscapes and winter weather woven throughout. Freeman deftly selects words that carry within them enough meaning to fill out even the tiniest line, as when she writes in the title poem, “each term’s a sentence/ during leap-year.” Freeman’s line breaks are surprising, restless, even anxious, yet always methodical. The opening poem, “Forward” (recalling a “foreword”) introduces readers to the main themes of the book: voyage, emptiness, how to find that which is not lost. The second section, titled “#343,” is partially an homage to, and a conversation with, Emily Dickinson. Freeman carries this off with authority while resisting telltale Dickinson-esque revelation. These poems are clean and discriminating, revealing a poet concerned with the tension of the line, the tension of silence, and the pursuit of something beyond epiphany, something closer to truth. (Nov.)