Starfish

by Pauline Uchmanowicz

What if we had to pick: “The ocean or the stars. / A reputation in truth telling or a prize in diplomacy?” (“Elements of Style”). As its title intimates, Starfish contemplates what delights as well as unsettles us when elemental symbols collide. At times rendered through the perception of a “year-rounder” residing in a tourist locale, its poems offer close-up portraits of individuals bounded by shorelines yet attuned to the expansiveness of starlit, seaside horizons. Alert to what separates but also to what binds people, the book as a whole weighs the ceaseless negotiation of human intimacy against the limits of temporality.

49 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 25, 2016