King of the Fireflies

The poems in Rebecca Weiner Tompkins’s King of the Fireflies lead the reader on a journey through a world of landscapes: urban; rural; mythological; emotional; erotic; cultural; political; and spiritual, and the borders between them. The voice throughout  is of a figure in those landscapes, struggling to navigate love, loss, and mortality while juxtaposing natural and human-made environments,. Her language is both visual and musical (as well as a writer, she is also a lifelong working musician), and the poems range from lyric to narrative, but always with a strong sense of location and a precision of detail, even when the speaker is conveying questions or doubt. These poems explore the edges and the depths of dark places—but possibility, anticipation, and even humor are present. The exploration leads forward, and the promise of renewal rings true.