Fjords Vol. 2

Schomburg (Pulver Maar) enacts the beauty, grief, and anxiety of being alive today in his tender sixth book, the second volume in his Fjords series. Each poem leaps between the ordinary and the absurd, acknowledging “the world is changing in every way, every second.” “Suna No Onna” asks, “You think it’s easy to be sealed up inside yourself, like a person inside a person, holding onto your secret name like your last glass of water?” Schomburg provides a steady series of subversions and dazzling images within the pages of these prose poem, allowing for moments of wondrous realization: “Love is how light can only fill up a space, and how it goes nowhere.” There are also moments of humorous juxtaposition. “Lay Down Little Troubles” opens: “I scoop up different kinds of shit in the desert with a shovel, but the shovel is much too big.” It’s an apt metaphor for the way Schomburg depicts life. The problem, he seems to suggest, is not always what we think it is. He muses: “We live beneath the clouds where all things not clouds go bad.” These ruminative poems are full of unusual ways of seeing and peppered with engaging insights. (May)