A review by jeeleongkoh
3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri

5.0

Vijay Seshadri's third collection, and it's well worth waiting for. The book is marvelous, constantly surprising. I enjoyed again the lacerating "Memoir" (which first appeared in The New Yorker) and the three apocalyptic visions of "This Morning" (which I first heard at a PSA reading). "Three Persons" is still a particular favorite. The theme of containing multitudes recurs in different guises throughout the book, culminating in the transformative ending of "Personal Essay," where the faces seen in a trance are themselves and more than themselves. I also love the essay "Pacific Fishes of Canada" and will be sharing it with a colleague who teaches Moby Dick. The book takes many risks in its language--colloquial, mythic, sentimental, scientific--but rides the waves through the energy of its sentences.