AWE

By Dorothea Lasky Description Reviews An unforgettable debut: Lasky is a seductive prophet who delights as well as she terrifies. If the Book of Revelations had been scribbled in the diary of a precocious fourteen-year-old girl, the prophecies might look something like AWE. Lasky is a daring truth teller, naming names and boldly pushing the boundaries of confession. Walt Whitman, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, Andre Breton and fairy tales shimmer in the background while the speaker, clear-eyed, observes of a wolf we all know: “O the red room of his mouth / That I am sleeping so soundly in.” Lasky beckons to us, in a voice bigger than her own, “Follow me, I know everything.” Melanie Hubbard, St. Petersburg TimesAwe is a startling collection, a book willing to offer the reader a quiet intensity and a hushed honesty. Lasky, pushing aside the hip tendencies of our literary moment, writes from the place where poetry started: A genuine need to communicate emotion, to speak to our most