A review by leerazer
Churches by Kevin Prufer

4.0

Prufer lays open a death-haunted America in this dark collection, entwining political and personal story lines in sprawling verses that frequently call upon fantastical images: missiles fired from the moon, post-apocalyptic settlements, self-aware bombs. He seems focused on displaying a society that is ill, that indeed seeks out violence and cannot do without it, as in this appeal to "terrorists" in Show Us:

We are a nation of gray old men walking rain-slick streets beneath black umbrellas. / Fill our tall buildings with your vines and blooms, sprinkle us with glitter and with glass, / with thrills and shards of foil and steel!

In a poem called Poetry, he personifies the poem, asking if it has any relevance today as it surveys all the wreckage:

I saw the whole thing. Here I am. Up here. / ... then down I'll fall past my neighbors' windows, down I'll tumble to where that car is burning, / to where that man sleeps inside it and the column of smoke is invisible in the night / and you won't notice my descent, no, you won't cry out, you won't turn and gather around me, you won't ask me any questions at all.

A recognition of the irrelevance of poets today, who are often said to only be talking to each other, in a tiny circle? If all a poet today can really do is rage while being ignored, at least he can do so with style.

while the baby boy slept in his box /
beneath the floorboards they walked across, /
and all night long /
his little dreams rose up on strings /
and filled the house /
that the morning light washed clean.