Something Bright, Then Holes: Poems

Something Bright, Then Holes: Poems

<b>These days<br><br />the world seems to split up<br><br />into those who need to dredge<br><br />and those who shrug their shoulders<br><br />and say, It’s just something<br><br />that happened.</b></p><br /><br />While Maggie Nelson refers here to a polluted urban waterway, the Gowanus Canal, these words could just as easily describe Nelson’s incisive approach to desire, heartbreak, and emotional excavation in <i>Something Bright, Then Holes</i>. Whether writing from the debris-strewn shores of a contaminated canal or from the hospital room of a friend, Nelson charts each emotional landscape she encounters with unparalleled precision and empathy. Since its publication in 2007, the collection has proven itself to be both a record of a singular vision in the making as well as a timeless meditation on love, loss, and―perhaps most frightening of all―freedom.