Jean

In his sophomore collection, Roberto Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed. 'I attend the reunion/of myself. Swapping out lime water for chamomile tea./ Comb-over days in which we refuse to accept what is lost.' In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own 'sad heartsong'. Here are poems that feel both intimate and timely, yet somehow beamed in from another planet, far, far away.