Hard Jolts of Hope by Natalia Prusinska

All of us, from bumpkins to artists, are always picking up and carrying on. Intimacies, skepticism, transformation, scars: these are things that also happen to be common to, and woven into, the fabric of lyric poems. In Natalia Prusinska‘s Hard Jolts of Hope, we encounter a poet whose preoccupations take us to a place where Emerson’s remark that the mission of American poetry is to show us the power of surprise comes to mind. Here the “jolt” of the title lands us squarely in the ambit of this aesthetic, passionate and stunning in its immediacy and frankness. The language is terse and sharp, bristling with intelligence and precision. Think of a mashup of Creeley, Olds, and Lockwood. And feelingly memorable. That’s the thing that every poet wants and Prusinska can claim.

–David Rigsbee, author of This Much I Can Tell You and Not Alone in My Dancing:  Essays and Reviews.