Lazarus Species

Walker-Figueroa’s expansive sophomore collection (after Philomath) reckons with contemporary life on Earth and beyond. Drawing on an impressive range of voices, from Dante to David Bowie, she channels existential dread into poems that are surprising and innovative. In a section of sonnets, the speaker finds an unlikely kinship with Bowie’s Starman, reimagined here as a dummy seated in a Tesla Roadster traveling through space: “I think you’re like me, lonely passenger.” The question of extinction is at the heart of the collection as the speaker contends with how to live when “my ceasing/ has already begun.” Formally inventive, the poems feature extensive footnotes, which are disrupted by striking confessional moments: “You find your family,/ your whole phyla & future, buried/ in some encyclopedia & glean/ how small the risk of eternity.” No two entries are alike, cycling from classical forms to modern text-speak, from Mars to a restaurant in Brooklyn. Despite the crises looming in the background, Walker-Figueroa writes with wit and defiance: “Why not gallop to our end? Press/ Send & kiss gravity hello?” The result is gripping and idiosyncratic. (Nov.)