[Carl Copeland]

The Anglo-Saxons were no clods, were they. Imagine minds that needed such a word! It’s a brilliant launching pad for a poem, and the strikingly inventive language—“coffee of ground light,” “cellflakes of my pastness snakeskinned into light,” “aborted broom,” “rusted languages rattle their keys”—is well worth the price of the book, as John put it. I had a short list of nits, but each time I read the poem, the list got shorter. All I have left is this:

How un-easily 'coffee' shifts to 'coffin'.—The poem seems to demonstrate how easy it is. But you mean that it’s uneasy, not that it’s not easy. (Another half an hour and this nit would have evaporated too!)

throat full to retching with names she has never remembered—I’m not suggesting you drop the last line, but this one is certainly good enough to end on. I just don’t get the transition from wonder and deep memory to revulsion. Maybe that will come.

And, not a nit, but another of my perverse misreadings: I started out thinking it was the N who was both newly religious and “sacrilegiously alive.” The contradiction didn’t bother me, but I’ve realized, just before sending, that it’s the husband & kids who are alive. Leave it to me.

My favorite of yours too, I think, Cameron.