The Glazier's Country
By Janet Kaplan
Selected by Yvette Christiansë
The Glazier’s Country is a book of history and ethics. The poems follow the life of a survivor of Eastern European pogroms, but the theme is larger: notions of victimhood as an identity, moral certitude, and the differences between justice and revenge are questioned and explored. The poems’ formal qualities mirror the fractured lives of the people in them: seemingly disparate voices break in, words are scattered across the page. But the ultimate message of The Glazier’s Country is an insistence that we can choose wholeness, “choose good / solo & each day / over faith / over clan or country / it is an art / & each day again.”
“Among the leading poets of the newest generation of American writers.”
— Molly Peacock