Sufjan by Hannah Larrabee

In Hannah Larrabee‘s collection, Sufjan, she has undertaken a project we’ve all probably been inspired to do: take songs from a favorite artist and translate them into poetry. Unlike the rest of us, she’s found a way to do it that moves beyond the songs into the realm of her own language. Despite their exterior point of origin, Larrabee’s poems take on her fine, dense voice. Her poems aren’t afraid to ask big questions and offer no answers. She begins “Ursa Minor” asking, “What else matters when I am out walking under stars…” and concludes, “…little ladle, bring me back to the surface, taste me for brine, what is there to add?” The answers might be in the touch of a wrist, or in a particle collider, they might be nowhere. What I enjoy most about these poems is Larrabee’s capacity to move beyond the self. Blending prayer, the cosmos, relationships, and daily life, these poems veer and swerve, they leap with images and metaphors into realms of articulated strangeness (as in “Fourth of July” and “Impossible Soul” : “a billion neutrinos pass /  through my fingernail / every second but a smile / is the mystery”) that while luminescent, remain just grounded enough that we don’t come entirely unstuck. This is a voice I’m content, indeed compelled, to spend time with.

–Thom Caraway, editor, Rock & Sling