Nightboat Books (paperback, 04/07/2020)
*New & Noteworthy: Joyelle McSweeney’s newest collection, Toxicon and Arachne, employs a range of lyric forms together with longer episodic sequences to exhibit the sublime in disheartening, bleak terms. The first section, "Toxicon," written in anticipation of the birth of the poet's daughter, Arachne, reads like a strange sinkhole-nightmare, replete with seepage and disarray, surrounded by a vague static, as if the poet is meeting the dead for the first time. In the later section, "Arachne," written after Arachne's brief life and death—her “odd allocation of thirteen days”—lament is excruciatingly detailed with intimate accounts of the days that followed. McSweeney’s diction throughout is propelled not only by sonic invention but perhaps more notably by a kind of lyric toxicity—words contaminating one another. This collection overflows with devastation, communicated by a speaker well aware of obscene ends yet by one who’s deeply dedicated to and enthralled by death’s creations.
