We are a few days late getting this posted on the blog, but Sarah Dravec has written a stellar review of Betsy Andrews’ The Bottom.
Here is an excerpt:
You simply have to read this book to grasp the development of this piece. On a single page, for example, the narrative progresses from the numbness of human traffic along a beach to a horse named Patches to Donald Trump to the speaker’s dying and hallucinating grandmother, all working together to create affecting social commentary. Andrews’s expertly handled repetition and use of lists make this a book to remember, but the depth of this poem is seriously awe-inspiring. Everything about this book—the setting, the subject matter, the speaker, the human, animal, and natural characters, the title itself—pulls the reader down, down into Andrews’s insistence that we must be both cognizant and invigorated by the need to understand what we are doing to the world around us. I have read and reread the final lines:
a dusky scratch, a naked singularity cast in a font 10 million years gone;
still, the unmistakable signature of the presence of absence;
past the moon named Egg and the moon named Eggshell,
a crack in the well of the night, hydromantic and, perhaps,
just bright enough for you to find us
humble telescope,
find us
Betsy Andrews’ The Bottom is live and available for purchase here.
42milespress.com 