Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

“It’s no small feat to compose a lifetime in just 24 pages of poetry, but Jeffrey Bean has done this, and brilliantly. His poems begin with an adored ‘you,’ and they make one long to be this beloved person, the language is so luscious and exquisitely tuned (. . . her hair, shook foil). He flits back in time too, revisiting a sensuous childhood where ” the graffiti I carved into the grass / has vanished, but the grass insists / on whispering about it.” Finally, a newborn appears, “chubby fire, flaring / all night into the eye of / the video monitor.” Bean offers startling takes on familiar objects and experiences. A retainer is a “disembodied organ, pink as sex.” There’s a singing beer can, dancing cellophane, the failed garden brought to life in a closet filled with beautiful red shirts, “that grass-and-river feeling.” And always, always, the most lovely, subtle music, for the poet knows not to blare, but to weave sound in, as if it were floating down from an upstairs window.” Sarah Gorham, poet & editor-in-chief of Sarabande Books