How to Love Everyone and Almost Get Away with It

“There are healthy ways to enjoy a relationship/ with pain. Glitter glue, for example,” Egger observes in her reflective and self-deprecating debut. Skillfully maneuvering between humor and “lipstick sorrow shimmering,” these poems simmer with a clever, quirky vitality that laughs through vulnerable confessions and longing. Spattered throughout are a series of guides (in response to poet Kenneth Koch) that provide simple, yet not necessarily easy to implement, vignettes on lunar ambulation, heredity, and husbandry. Egger’s poems take wild, exhilarating turns, which, juxtaposed with her often-deadpan tone, may remind readers of James Tate: “My vision of you can be expressed by a pasture of nervous horses. My hope is a sea anemone, panning light on the ocean floor.” In this engaging and inventive debut, Egger rides “the zip line between rapture and pain,” delighting readers with insights that make the obscure seem obvious. (Apr.)