You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave

by Maya C. Popa

Overview

This is a work of seething precision. In these poems, hope is a meticulous, meditative state--a method of forensic searching and study that is carried with great care across generations. By stitching her raging images together with stillness and poise, Popa asks us to step back from our panic and look: "peeling back the hair, that quiet, necessary artifice, / to reveal a nesting doll of impulses." --Caroline Bird

In Maya Catherine Popa's You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave, feathers are unfulfilled parables, a hen's eggs turn a vicious red, and a super moon "blooms a tyranny of flowers." A helix of histories lies threaded to both the present day and the various magics of night. These poems are smart and lush, and at the end of each of them my heart, mind, and ear argue over which was lavished with the most pleasure. I am enchanted by this book, in its thrall, its bright gravity, its terribilitá. --Traci Brimhall

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934832653
Publisher:	New Michigan Press
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.10(d)

Table of Contents

A Technique for Operating on the Past 1

Terribilità 3

An Appetite for Silver 5

Private Constellations 6

Late Under October’s Supermoon 17

My Godfather Votes Trump 8

On the Forces of Improvisation Under the Gun Law 10

Scala Naturae 12

Knockout Mouse Model 14

Sinaia, Romania 16

Lines in Still Water 18

Second Pass 19

The Dream That Had You 20

Meadowlarks and Markers 21

Hummingbird 23

American Faith 24

You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave 25

Acknowledgments 27

Editorial Reviews

This is a work of seething precision. In these poems, hope is a meticulous, meditative state--a method of forensic searching and study that is carried with great care across generations. By stitching her raging images together with stillness and poise, Popa asks us to step back from our panic and look: "peeling back the hair, that quiet, necessary artifice, / to reveal a nesting doll of impulses." --Caroline Bird

In Maya Catherine Popa's You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave, feathers are unfulfilled parables, a hen's eggs turn a vicious red, and a super moon "blooms a tyranny of flowers." A helix of histories lies threaded to both the present day and the various magics of night. These poems are smart and lush, and at the end of each of them my heart, mind, and ear argue over which was lavished with the most pleasure. I am enchanted by this book, in its thrall, its bright gravity, its terribilitá. --Traci Brimhall

From the Publisher