How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars To Stars by A.N. Harris

Alysia Harris’s poems are sumptuous and ruthless and governed by a voice that is pure accelerant. The poems in HOW MUCH WE MUST HAVE LOOKED LIKE STARS TO STARS effortlessly collapse antiquity into modernity, the religious into the erotic, and death into life. In a time when many poets write in a deliberately shallow manner, Harris is too smart and her imagination too hungry to be satisfied with the meager delights of irony. This poet is aroused by some mysterious plea just beyond her reach. She has no choice but to hurl herself into those things within her reach: lovers, memory, prayer. Each poem, poised and meticulously crafted, is the result of those harrowing collisions and as readers we are made better because of them.

–John Ebersole, Public Pool

A wild glory suffuses the poetry of Alysia Harris. Here, the body is not villainous nor detached from the imbedded songs of wonder, justice, and history. Here are lines, as if built from Brecht’s gestic principle, that wake us from the Big Sleep, that caution us from looking askance at our inexorable beauty. Poem after poem she demonstrates an instinctive glamour in speech that is artful, humane, and profoundly alive.

–Major Jackson, Roll Deep

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]