Distant Mandate: Poems

Mlinko (Marvelous Things Overheard) repurposes the archaic and deposits the mythic into a contemporary space, crafting glimmering poems of scrupulous linguistic intricacy that transcend time. In one she travels away from “the land/ of Dollar This, Save That, Thrift Buys” and ends in a new place, which she describes through a series of musical negations that include likening a shell to an ancient Greek skin scraper: “Seems like nothing’s gentle here but mist:/ not spiky palms, sand spurs, the strigil/ of a shell that scrapes the rock to grist;/ not the lighthouse’s gimlet vigil.” Propelled by sound, Mlinko’s end-rhyme patterns amplify her deft wordplay. These song-like structures are, for her, a small source of stability in an ever-changing world. She admits, “I guess we like our stanzas/ like barrier islands taking the hit/ when the Atlantic’s/ all worked up in one of its blustery/ dances.” Mlinko’s “Repeated patterns tease” and further mark her preoccupation with stable geometries: “Ocean beyond the ramparts/ suggests that stem-celled seconds fiend-/ ishly agglomerate with fits and starts// into unprecedented forms.” References to forts and fortresses (“the feminine form!”) also dot the collection, whose title is derived from a László Krasznahorkai comment on the Alhambra in Spain. Seeking order within chaos, Mlinko layers delicately wrought lines into crystalline solids. (July)