RaveThe Cortland Review... the poems in Natalie Shapero’s third collection, Popular Longing, are anything but ordinary. They dig beneath the definition of \'longing\' itself, to the coal-powered engine inside it. Although they tackle conscious, consumerist desires, these poems hitch themselves to the subliminal—the kind of longing that is less about want and indulgence than it is about a need to know where this train ends up and how to get there fast. It is not a longing for death, so much as a relentless looking forward. An unstoppable acceleration towards one end or another and a one-way ticket to wherever that is ... These wryly observant and introspective poems peel back the skin of overabundance and find waste just beneath it. They cut open the heart of treasure and find trash clogging the drain of the aorta ... In these incisive and agile poems, one man’s mountain of gold is another man’s landfill. Are we truly burying these things or being buried by them? ... Natalie Shapero’s deadpan humor and striking lyricism are the spoonful of sugar that helps you to swallow a mouthful of glass. These poems have hard, sharp edges but you don’t even notice until you’ve gulped a whole delicious one down and feel the bloody catch in your throat.
