Drewes, Steffi: Tell Me Every Anchor Every Arrow

Tell Me Every Anchor Every Arrow by Steffi Drewes (Kelsey Street Press, paperback)

Publication Date: October 1, 2016

Publisher Marketing: Poetry. TELL ME EVERY ANCHOR EVERY ARROW traces simultaneous trajectories on a map that takes shape in real time: relationships, conversations, dream worlds, daily minutiae, and natural phenomena shift against a vivid panorama, spanning subways, Pacific coastlines, and desert highways. Here, a horizon line is not merely a vista, but an urgent, incantatory text resonant with the textures of smoke curls, ant colonies, and stale gum. Together, these nautical odes, anti-pastoral narratives, philosophical inquiries, and epistolary postcards present a kaleidoscopic travelogue exploring human connection and self-determination.

"This is one of the most exuberant debuts I've ever read. Precious few poets go so undaunted by the extravagant plastic possibilities of syntax; fewer still so readily measure their lines 'in thumbprints or dumplings/in trees not planted or one–syllable birdcalls.' To be enthused once meant to be possessed by a god, and indeed these poems recall sibylline speech, alternately sublime and divinely silly. The only check on Drewes' channeling of music's alternative knowledge is her rigorous intelligence, which she employs to make of failure—to love, to understand, or to come to terms with an experience—a durable enchantment. By her sights, these failures take flight as poems as light and artfully made as kites. By dint of feint and sleight of hand, they zephyr upward fueled by accident, swerve, and skew." —Brian Teare