Amulet

In her first poetry collection, Amulet, author Stephanie Kartalopoulos deals with loss, family, and memory. Her work is articulated through a voice concerned with the self’s quest to understand its own capacities and relationship to the world in which she lives. Through vivid description, internal rhyme, and a focus on relational dynamics (many poems situate their speaker relative to an other—whether beloved or familial), the poems are filled with sound-play, clipped lyricism, musicality, and a constant questioning of both possibility and reality. True to the manuscript’s title, “Amulet,” the poems in this collection ultimately rest on hope above all else, even when this hope seems obscure or impossible.