You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love

Harvey (Hemming the Water) explores in her striking latest the relationship between freedom, social justice, and the lyric imagination. Spanning a variety of literary forms, from prose poems and lyric fragments to sonnets, the work in this frequently gorgeous collection is unified by its concern with cultivating and articulating a collective consciousness. Harvey critiques popular culture and its myriad incarnations of “grand theft auto,” allowing poems to provide an alternate psychic space that affords the possibility of community and empowerment: “Part of the answer. is about. learning from/ & adapting. to each other. Part of the answer./ is about. Abbey Lincoln/ & Madonna. & Erykah. Badu.” Discordant experiences and historical moments, as well as various types of rhetoric, are vividly placed in conversation with one another, allowing poems to offer a hypothetical testing ground for preserving history and jostling hierarchies. Readers will be captivated by Harvey’s voice and vision. (Sept.)