Is This the Body / If Hovers, Melicker Todd

Todd Melickers poems arise from a spare economy of grace. His one or two word lines build poems made with care, not carefulness. Quiet, but deeply alert, IS THIS THE BODY / IF HOVERS registers a world that the reader will recognize as, somehow, true. That is, the lineaments of this world (mountain, deer, aspen, ash, mouth, earth, tongue) are coincident with the landscapes in which we walk and the bodies with which we perceive. At the same time, Melicker reconfigures what we know to startling effect (she was / born a // lull in / aspen, the palm / of my // tongue walks / through // the earth) to demonstrate that our perceptions can be altered to grant access into unfamiliar terrain. The articulations of these poems come from a tongue that spills / from leaves // as they could encase.--Elizabeth Robinson