Burn It Down

Politically slanted and concerned with questions of location, affiliation, and love, Byrum’s debut collection captures the nuances of current American society and is wonderfully Whitmanesque. The poems are guided by the tension found in intimacy. In tracing the dissolution of a romantic relationship, Byrum simultaneously negotiates the boundaries of the relationship she has with New York City: “staring at everyone staring back/ in strangers’ pictures I will be small/ and secondary scenery/ to see the city clearly you have to be/ at some remove.” That remove is found in the “desolate flats/ and burned-out barns” of middle America, its “sky/ with a promise at the edges.” And she writes of “lukewarm” suburbia with a dynamism that the landscape itself lacks: “This is the parking lot of my discontent:/ Starbucks, blank blank, black tar, blank blank,/ Chick-fil-A with extra sauce, et cetera,/ We all know about having/ too much of a good thing.” But her strength is describing familiar routines of city life. “You wouldn’t believe/ the emergencies I’ve walked past,” she writes, “I have snarled at fat men/ who called me beautiful,/ feigned sick in the face of birthdays.” Byrum’s poetry is startling in its quiet but resonant beauty: “I press your spine/ like I’m on a city bus/ and the next stop’s mine.” [em](May) [/em]