PositiveHyperallergicIn the poems...she fleshes out the experience of selfhood, as it corresponds to the world, more completely than in her previous collections. While her prior books could sometimes read like conceptually icy soliloquies to oblivion, prefiguring the collapse of collectively shared values, with A Sand Book she’s looking out onto the world, addressing its dramatic vistas in a tone absent of irony: that of an \'I\' addressing a \'you.\' The 12 sections that compose A Sand Book designedly capture the minute particulars of experience, organizing memories, dreams, and reflections under different thematic headings ... the spirituality of Reines’s poetry, which often speaks to the authenticity of mystical experience, comes across much more profoundly than in her previous work. Admirers of Reines won’t be disappointed; and new readers will learn a great deal about the personality shaping her singular poetic voice.
