Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

Starred review from September 19, 2022
Popa’s subtle and gorgeous second collection (after American Faith) maps the conflicting effects of having “wanted all the world, its beauties,/ and its injuries.” The ecstatic language of these meditations and confessions is animated as much by pain as by joy. Popa, a reviews editor at PW, refuses to disparage the world simply because it does not offer “the good news I had hoped for” and mines childhood for glimmers of hope to light the contemporary darkness with “Full days settled by wildflower and stone.” She also asks for passion and tenderness in love (“Let’s be hungry a little/ while longer. Let’s not hurt each other if we can”) to counter the weight of the pandemic, lifted a little when “Friends fed the day hope/ like a broken fever.” She turns to literature—Milton, Gilgamesh, the Bible—as well as to nature (and even WebMD) for guidance, seeking consolation wherever it may be found. “The wound is where/ the light enters us,” she writes. Indeed, in these pages, the truth of each day is brutal but also beautiful.

November 1, 2022
This second collection of poetry from Popa (American Faith, 2020) takes its title from a likely origin for the word ""wonder,"" ""thought to be a cognate with the German wunde or wound."" Indeed, Popa's poems traverse both ends of this etymology. Composed of sharp images and evocative lyrics, her speakers explore both the ""wounding breath of air"" that afflicts a diver succumbing to the bends, but also an astonished lepidopterist, armed with net and binoculars, ""wondering still at the paperwork of flight."" Other poems move into passion, albeit hesitant in nature, patient: a couple half-jokingly defers from copulating in the backseat of a car, the ""animal of the body"" left ""to wrestle with buttons in the mind's backseat."" Popa renders these emotional moments like gemstones rotated in the sun, glittering from every angle. The title poem itself explores lucid, beguiling grief for a dying pollinator: ""It's not metaphor that bees make honey / of themselves while language only dreams / the hunted thing."" A remarkable collection from an early-career poet very much making her ascendance.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.