The Thicket

Author: Kasey Jueds Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press (2021) The Thicket opens into intimate encounters with the more-than-human world—rivers, birds, stones—and with a “you” that is not a person, necessarily, but also not not a person: maybe God, maybe an aspect of the self, maybe neither or both. Often speaking of/to the small or overlooked (weeds by a roadside, an abandoned silo), the poems orient themselves toward edges, transitional spaces like the one where fields shift into woods. Where does one body stop? The Thicket takes an interest in becoming, one thing flowing into something else. “In Kasey Jueds’s gorgeous new book, The Thicket, every flower, thorn, and body of water is both archetype and fact. These rich lyrics act as doors to a transformation like sleep or like season. Jueds’s poems are like living inside a spell, a magic that is both story and circle. With her close attention to nature and stunning litanies, she enchants the natural world around us and reminds