spuytenduyvil

Eye is a book of poems that turns the experience of being snowbound into a profound journey moving through sight to insight and song. “A closed eye / sees just as well,” Mike Bove writes in his first poem—because the eye here is seeking vision, that liminal space between inner and outer where everything observed is both its own vivid self and more. We hear real mice who somehow got into the attic, but also those thoughts we’d keep out of our heads if we could. Using “eye” instead of “I” is a way to hold the self loosely, to slip out of its insistence and let observations rise without, as Keats says, any irritable grasping. Bove writes with a quiet grace, whether he is speaking of childhood grief over a mother’s drinking, or the sudden rapture of stepping out into the swirl of snow. These poems are full of intelligence and wit, sure music, and emotional depth. Like a snowstorm that slows us down and keeps us indoors, these beautiful poems create space for that inner life which is both crucial and endangered in our distracted world.

     Betsy Sholl, author of As if a Song Could Save You

 

Bove begins Eye beautifully, with a simple invitation towards introspection, then walks us through as we watch various human and ecological seasons of change, decay, and growth. In these poems, Bove lets the eye see all. And as a reader and sometimes open-eyed witness, we are brought along on the journey—outward to inward; past, future, present. We view each scene from different vantage points and different angles, from western mountains to a scene on a bedroom floor. This intimate collection will connect to things you might be holding deep in your core and will open space for those moments to be seen anew.

     Samaa Abdurraqib, PhD, editor of From Root to Seed:

     Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast