Chimeras

Regal and eerie, Clare Welsh's Chimeras recalls early English poetry: its short line, alliterative phrasing, and lore. However, this abbreviated bestiary of the fantastic and common, the living and dead-swans, wolves, deer, koi, and Wind Horses-traverses a contemporary world, at times ordinary, at times post-apocalyptic dystopia. The young speaker tries to find her place here-to distinguish, if distinguishable, self from artifact in "a selfie next to the partially exposed bone. -Carolyn Hembree, author of Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a PlagueChimeras invokes an "alchemy" that turns the "shit" of quotidian life into the "gold" of, or an aspiration to, song. These poems are taut, darkly humorous, and edgy. Clare Welsh stands on the threshold of a luminous career. -Richard Katrovas, author of Mystic Pig