In the Sunroom with Raymond Carver

A new collection of poetry by Dannye Romine Powell remains cause for celebration; and her latest, In the Sunroom with Raymond Carver, underscores her abiding reputation as a poet of breathtaking candor and precision, the consummate craftswoman, who painstakingly parses syllables into words as if sifting for gold. These yearning, often prayerful, poems are laced with shimmer, incandescence—sometimes blinding—moments of recognition and epiphany that inform every chiseled line Powell commits to paper. Above all, her work is intricately exacting. She gets things right: the truth, the light, how we say things, how we don’t say things, the nuanced choreography of imperceptibly monumental moments. Yet, make no mistake: the poet desists sentimentality, as she does so fiercely at every turn in this amazingly beautiful and courageous volume. This is a very important book by a very important poet at the summit of her powers. —Joseph Bathanti