Opening with hunger and appetite, Took House, an alluringly haunting poetry collection, invites the reader to the table to dip in and out of love, obsession, and what remains hidden.
On a tree-thick road snaking towards a thatched-roof village Boniface had asked a little wench: How big is Gaesmere? Finally, he had almost preached his way out of the land of the Saxons and into Hessia. How heavy is the trunk, how close to Heaven does it reach?
I am doing the dishes for the millionth time. And the word weary keeps repeating in my head. It catches itself on a lyric.
I never wrote the poem, though I wanted to, / where I wished to steal Stern’s phrase— / “the world at last a meadow”—for no reason / other than to speak again its genius and beauty
In the night what else can you wonder / wide awake besides what a wonder, this pain?
Pray the grime-coated stairway of 1 Scammel Street. Smoke-stained walls and fallen chunks of plaster. The floor we painted cheer yellow.
