All the Pretty Things Are Dying by Laurel Maxwell

In her collection, All the Pretty Things are Dying, Laurel Maxwell asks her readers to engage with the work by asking questions. In “Eight”: “What about those unbelieving believers who hunger?/What about the waves that continually somersault onto the shore?” In “Bottled Hearts”: “Is that how the heart keeps from grieving?/Continually remaking itself until it has become something else altogether?” And then answers, which aren’t meant to be the answers, bur rather a means to provoke deeper reflection. In “Warning”: “The ocean only wants to whisper to sand/…Trees want to root and shoot like arrows in the azure sky.” After Pablo Neruda, after Mary Oliver, Maxwell asks us again and again, “And what is it we desire in the world?” speaking to longing, heart and destruction, inviting readers into a dialogue which includes Ilya Kaminsky, Naomi Shihab Nye, Aida Limon, ocean, monarchs, redwoods, worms and potatoes. In one of the final poems, “What I Carry,” Maxwell queries “Then how do you live?/Unfolding like a flower that turns its head to the sun.” As these poems unfold with keen observation, piquant language, understated elegance and deep wisdom.

–Magdalena Montagne, Author Earth My Witness