Startle Pattern – by Larissa Szporluk
by Larissa Szporluk
“Heavenly joy means growing backwards,” Szporluk tells readers early in Startle Pattern, foreshadowing the tilting path of her collection. Haunted by visions of loss and the ongoing violence of the body, these poems unfold like memories through time as personal tragedies become like fairy tales. Startle Pattern illustrates that a passing of years does not create healing: that pain, after fully seizing the physical, bleeds into the psyche.
These poems are memorizable – small, amazing machines made of images and sounds – and therefore unforgettable. There is not a page of poetry in Startle Pattern that doesn’t stop a reader in her tracks, and take her back to the first line, excited to experience that page again. Larissa Szporluk has long been one of my favorite poets. This collection is her best yet. -Laura Kasischke
Larissa Szporluk is one of the most powerful and defining voices of her generation. In Startle Pattern she follows her intuition into the dark marshes where the human and mythic overlap, and the truths she finds there make one shudder. Classic Szporluk: no pretense, no artifice, no stumbling. -Jane Mead
Startle Pattern is in the Surrealist Poetry Series. Chapbooks in this series can be purchased here.