RaveZYZZYVA... [a] nuanced, intriguing novel ... Its exposition engages as thoroughly as an action-packed thriller—more thoroughly, perhaps, as its explication—trust, doubt, multiple interpretations of actions and word—may be more interesting than murder and mayhem ... every interaction is rich with ambiguity and introspection. For the course of Intimacies, you live in the perspective of the narrator, as established from that first paragraph. You experience every scene through her observant and questioning gaze. You become her so thoroughly that at the end of the book it’s a shock that you never learn her name. It’s a tour de force, and I found myself going back through certain passages because I had read so quickly, so urgently, that I wanted to reread and re-experience certain incidents ... Her control of characters, events, and emotions is extraordinary, the explication at once spare and vivid, and the questions it explores profound. Lucky you if you get to read her for the first time.
A.E. Stallings
RaveZYZZYVA\"Reading A.E. Stallings’ new book of poetry, Like... my first impression was a furious delight at the way she invigorates the old forms and makes them sing. No one else I know can breathe such life into rhyme, can elevate the mundane to the mythic, the prosaic to the transcendent. The diction is often deliciously at odds with the form—contemporary slang set off against the myth of Pandora, for example ... This book is rich with form: villanelles, sonnets, syllabics, terza rima, and no one could accuse Stallings of writing without an ear for meter, assonance, and rhyme, even when the form isn’t standard. But what makes Like so thoroughly appealing is the mix of the contemporary into the form ... Though not every poem is successful, even those that don’t work as well are apt to have a ravishing phrase or two. It’s invigorating to read a poet who can make form new, unique, and alive.\
