ALT Dillard’s style is often direct and vivid, but does not shy away from the abstract and surreal; he uses several techniques to defamiliarize quotidian detail—reminiscent of Charles Simic—that are well-matched to content. Perhaps the most striking example of this is a poem titled after an abstraction, “The Newness,” that is tightly composed around imagery of toilets. Dillard opens with a realist declarative sentence: “Sometimes you have to get rid of a toilet.” From there, he guides readers using a mixture of imaginative detail (“Do you know how easy a toilet shatters / under one sledgehammer swing?”) and carefully-enjambed revelation (“it’s like / when you died and, after, I broke / your life apart”), all of which culminate in a changed way of seeing: Now when I go for walks I wonder where a toilet would fit in. I wonder, if you were here, what new place you would pick to abandon.

ALT Regardless of which illusion is targeted, Carter’s work points continually towards acceptance: of self and others; of the natural world’s dangerous beauty; of the ugly necessities of survival. As the speaker of “Interloper” states: “I want to find a way to belong in this wilderness. / Even if it is to feed its beasts of prey” (39). In an increasingly holographic world—social media feeds, manufactured consent in mass media, unrealistic pornography, AI-generated facsimiles of human creativity, and more—work such as Follow This Blood to Find a Dead Thing is a welcome reminder that authentic vulnerability’s reward is worth the risk.

ALT May the longest day stretch possibility May the shortest life stimulate urgency