PositiveEntropyReines is a 21st century prophet, which is to say, the prophet popular American culture created ... A Sand Book is rhythmic, self-aware of its free incantatory metrical style, and utilizes motifs that re-emerge without surprising, making them feel distant, like echoes or reminders. These motifs come through in poems written as collages of experience, many of which lack normative progressions of sense and opt for stream-of-consciousness reflection ... A Sand Book covers an immense amount of territory over its 300+ pages, and as such the shorter poems interspersed with the longer poems work both as respites and little contemplations for the reader. While some of these feel a bit like filler, A Sand Book works more like a novel than like a poetry collection; not every sentence is meant to be or can be strong alone, but together they form a driven narrative whole. Reading Reines and journeying with her encouraged a deeper contemplation of existence because of this mix.
