Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod

The transporting fourth book from Brimhall (Saudade) takes reader to a parallel world, a landscape that terrifies. In the Land of Nod, which she describes as “that biblical exile of Cain and the drifting space of dream in lullabies” and “a landscape made for a lifetime of lostness,” the reader wanders through the pastoral delirium of sleepless infants, ancient sacrifices, and subverted fairy tales and fables. In alternating letters to Eros and Thanatos and in murder ballads and lullabies, Brimhall tells the story of a murdered friend, an event that coincides with the death of a mother and the speaker’s anxieties toward her own new motherhood. Through these braided griefs, Brimhall brings an eye to the romance of death and the implications of conflating violence with beauty and eros. “An image wounds/ in the wrong location,” she writes, “The horror of a carcass is the beauty/ of a butcher shop.” Elsewhere, the speaker wonders if she is “guilty of this same need to make death lovely.” Can death be understood through art? “God, God, what do I do/ after all this survival?” The questions posed by this stunning collection will remind readers of their own mortality, while reawakening the power and fury within them. (May)