RaveNPRAustin is a lyrical architect, rendering with urgency and plainspokenness what is arguably the most challenging kind of loneliness: that experienced amidst others ... Austin\'s speaker is sustained by friendship unlike any I\'ve ever seen in poetry. Not only are friends alive and dead named across a myriad of forms (sonnets and a palindrome to name just two), but they are threaded throughout the poems in complex ways that navigate joy, grief, and ambiguity, which is the erotic at its best: knowledgeable, patient, and capacious ... This is a stunning collection for these challenging times when intimacy has escaped us but will, eventually, return. Let this book be your primer.
