Reviewing poetry isn’t an easy endeavor; it’s such a subjective creative field, moreso even then fiction, and whether you respond to a particular collection or poem relies entirely on the life you have lived. At the very least I’ve always found that to be true.

The beauty found in Kirkey’s collection is of the best kind: simple and honest, unpretentious. It’s the kind of collection that you browse through, stopping when your attention snags on a line or image as a sweater’s loose strand would on an exposed nail. Each time that happened during my time spent with the book I would stick a slip of paper in the page; by the time I was finished my enjoyment of it was abundantly clear. Poems like “The Only Thing I Know,” “In the Winter of Your Heart,” and “Haunting Beauty” will stay with me for some time. And it was only with great reluctance that I returned this collection to its shelf.

Kirkey, a Massachusetts native, has a website and a blog; you can sample his poetry on both.