In Stein’s new collection, Terrible Blooms, poems brim with oblique renderings of the unsettling. Dark and violent memories sprout up; grief pervades; animals often turn up dead or in the process. There is a pall of the terrible cast over the work ... Another word might be survival, not only through the terrible, but also for the life that exists beyond.
Stein follows up Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, with more rough love ... If Stein wants to spin 'to lose my bearings,' she wants us to spin, too. Excellent poetry.
Stein (Rough Honey) pursues a kind of rejuvenation through language in her second collection, seeking a way to reckon with trauma in brief, lyric poems of dazzling craft ... Stein’s poems trace a deep pain, yet rely so heavily on technical mastery and special effects that the reader may have difficulty connecting with the collection’s beating heart.
