SALVAGE | Kristy Bowen (signed copy)

SALVAGE Black Lawrence Press, 2016 n her gorgeous new collection, salvage, Kristy Bowen builds an associative world, where details intensify and dissipate like the sea. Haunted and mysterious, lush and encompassing, this word is wet-often submerged, scaled, salt-washed. The poems within it bob and sink as they explore love and disconnection, “the riptide / pull of strange, lonely dogs and broken phone lines.” -Ruth Foley Salvage-meaning to save and rescue, meaning to recoup and reclaim, but also the ship and lost cargo, the payment made to a person who has done the saving. Such two-sided meaning swims through the Kristy Bowen’s salvage, a book that warns of lakes where, “It is foolish to love that which has freed you. Or that which you save.” Near such waters mermaids hunger for pretzel rolls and claw-footed tubs, ghosts thirst for trapdoors and dimestores, and houses make for broken promises and kisses in our palest places. We’re assured, “It will be comfortable, but a midw