Pelican

O'Neill's forceful, exceptional debut collection throbs with vitality and bursts with meaning as she examines personal relationships and her role in them. A significant portion of the collection consists of insightful, thought-provoking meditations on her relationship with her father, and she writes of it with scientific detail: "Repeat my father's unfamiliar language: quick/ pick on the Pick 6. My first lottery. All hope// hung on a receipt." A beautifully articulated sense of yearning permeates the poems and bleeds through the pages, as when she writes, "I take this/ currency to bed with me, sleep in a nest/ with the ghost of our sweat." She captures the mesmerization of young love and its sting without resorting to clich%C3%A9 or didacticism: "Another week of cake for lunch daily with a boy I loved/ who loved me. But I have no sweet tooth// & it's better to burn than be touched." Though often sparse and marked with quiet sentiment, O'Neill's dexterous and vibrant language conveys desire magnificently: "Her height in hours. Her hand in mine. The night, caught/ in a single breath, a moth seduced by artificial light." Never cloying or saccharine, O'Neill's poems ache with grief, loneliness, and the human need to feel loved. (Feb.)