Sails the Wind Left Behind

In her first collection, Alessandra Lynch deftly combines the surreal and the lyric into a striking and confident whole. At times witty, at times dreamlike, the poems revel in dense Symbolist-like imagery, juxtaposition, wordplay, and rhyme. By refusing a certain kind of transparency—direct statement and traditional allusion—Lynch excavates the shadowy region of the psyche. From a rich profusion of images emerge themes of unrealized desire, and the ways in which we may fail to be present in our own lives or to others. The poems seek to resolve these themes, suggesting how words, in memorializing the disorientations of life, reorient us; that it is in the tokens and monuments of our failed desires, broken promises—"Sails the wind left behind"—that we are able to find ourselves.

from "Where I live":

I live in a past passage of the rageful crow
and its stalkfirst feet;
it has staked my sleep
and forced me to crawl through flamethrown dawn.

I begin my day in slow burn,
the stove unlit and the flower’s mouth stuffed
with bribecloth and weep.

I begin stacking wood in a miniature village
wearing the flint of wake and the stone of sleep.

I live in a sleeve of love which won’t have me
leaning against moonhay which don’t love me
strumming a stack-tune in three-fingered rain.

"Alessandra is shockingly good. The heroic of her narrative reminds me of Emily Dickinson, when it isn’t reminding me of Hart Crane. I have loved her work for years and once they get the hang of it, the rest of the world will too. Bless this magnificent new book!"—Gerald Stern

Alessandra Lynch was raised north of New York City. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Currently, she teaches creative writing and English to high school students.