In these new poems from Steve Orlen, the work speaks directly without tricks. There's no fragmentation, flarf, call of the elliptical, language tricks, movement and meaning through fancy associations and juxtapositions. There's not even a gesture toward adornment or the raised uplift of the lyric lamenting someone's dead grandmother or in celebration of bees. Yet they come with the force of a sledgehammer, powerfully felt, illuminating.
