Wound Is the Origin of Wonder: Poems

"This book is an astonishment. In ravishing, formally exploratory poems, Maya C. Popa wields the lyric like a reparative scalpel, evoking wonder and woundedness in equal measure: 'It's plain we didn't see / the future coming, ' she announces. Searching for a spring that brings renewal, lamenting 'snow / that vanishes with touch, ' her poems register a unique combination of imperilment and possibility, with imagistic precision one can't forget: 'A faint hiss--that is / your own life now, hurrying / from one light to another.' Wound Is the Origin of Wonder reflects to us our own historical moment with unusual clarity, even as its lyric exploration of psychic and social landscapes stand outside of time. This is a book I will return to." --Meghan O'Rourke