Ange Mlinko
Shoulder Season
Coffee House Press
2010
82 pages
Paperback
$16


Mlinko has an ear for language, and an interest in form, and condensed diction, so many of these poems are tightly controlled. The eye is directed on external matters often, which reflect/refract allusions to writerly interests, or resemble the curious mind of a librarian. Sometimes this movement of elevating/enlivening the material with encyclopedic data seems of a piece, and sometimes it seems lacquered on, or the poem feels like a mere retelling of the facts. The ambitious streak and love for relatively unused words, and her ability to form them into interesting sentences, is a remarkable achievement. I don't mean to dismiss this--she has an obvious and admirable skill. I did wish the world would be a bit muddier, though, a bit clumsier, grittier, with more unknowable accident evident in the narratives. But this is to do with me. I have always been interested in the mistakes, the thing out of place which is in its place, the derailing distraction in the beautiful museum.