The heart of Jos Charles's third book of poetry, A Year & Other Poems, is the titular poem "Year," in which each month, arranged chronologically, serves as both a heading and the gathering of a few stanzas. With only a handful of longer poems on either side of "Year," this spare collection reflects the yawning space that sits between bursts of creativity, a few lines emerging from any given stretch of time. The layout and design contribute to this feeling as well: abundant white space and large margins separate each poem. In some, the first line, or even just the first word, stands in for the poem's title.
Charles (Feeld), a trans author who dedicates this poetry collection to "the lost," writes from a sense of loss herself, though it is a tight-lipped, contained mourning. Each poem has a tangible tension, a sense of something carefully parceled out. The stanzas in "Year" move through the calendar, but they live more in the body than in the weather or seasons. At the same time, the poems tilt toward the passage of time, as seen in the "October" entry for "Year": "When was it/ I knew my house to be/ falling apart/ when did I lift/ an arm or bend/ backward corbel like swung you your back/ to mine When was it ever September tides pouring over/ When whales like men moved about the earth." Charles has been celebrated as a poet of startling power, and this collection is perfect for those readers interested in the exercise of control in a line, a stanza and a poem as a whole. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian