Please thank you but why by Lysbeth Em Benkert

Lysbeth Benkert’s  Please thank you but why sings of and from the liminal spaces of the in between. Traversing a circular gyre between mythology and reality, history and the present, archetype and individual subject, absence and fullness, silence, and song, these linguistically crisp poems call and echo between plea, gratitude, and questioning with heartbreak, wit, and panache. Maybe the stasis of limbo can be recast as the fluidity of the liminal, these poems suggest. Maybe the dystopian banalities of the present tense are always/already timeless.

–Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50

Cerebral, sharp, and surprising, Lysbeth Em Benkert’s Please thank you but why traces a mind’s equilibrium as it confronts change. With spare syntax and pared-back lines, the poet needles wisdom into her work. Benkert’s is a democratic intelligence. She hails a Sumerian goddess, the Greek pantheon, a Roman poet, The Bard, the Virgin Mary, physics, and The Wizard of Oz, and yet these poems are smart without making a reader feel stupid. At once, Benkert suggests her concerns are timeless and offers us a modern take: “like you have to be…. / fucked up in order to get your second chance because repenting after sliding / through on gray mediocrity isn’t enough for redemption.” With its remixes in form deepening insight at every level, Please thank you but why will compel a pondering pleasure.

–Christine Stewart-Nuñez, South Dakota Poet Laureate 2019-2021