Into The The: Robin Reagler

Description

Robin Reagler’s Into The The is an entirely musical and fanciful book of poems that flaunt the poet’s formal dexterity.  The title poem, both an homage and questioning of Wallace Stevens, reminds us that the mind is not of use to us without the joys of the body, “A roaring praise/tests my fingernails…”  This is a book of strict observance of all that can be touched. – Jericho Brown

I’ve been waiting for this wonderful collection for so long—and, look:here it is, right when it’s most needed! Truly remarkable for its attention to internal and external realities, vividly aware of the ways they are entangled (shaping as they respond to each other), the poems in Into The The are bursting with fresh insights and imbued with a joyous passion for life. Honoring the “thousand secrets // otherwise known as // selfhood,” the poet enlightens and enlarges our idea of what it means to be human, tracing the longings which make each of us “a hostage of the sky.” To read this book is to breathe more deeply, taking a needed and restorative step forward into openness: “Darkness, I have been so lonely. Lie down with me in the grass and read me our future in the constellations of fireflies.” I am so grateful to be revived by the bright energy Reagler brings to the poet’s task of being “present…there in just the way / that you meant to be.” -Laura Mullen

This book is SO good. It is queer in more ways than two. While the is emblematic, the the is more than doubling down on the sum of its parts. You get the feeling I am not merely a sliding pronoun in search of a Bible-belt to tighten around everyone’s throats. With polemics kicked to the curb, what we get is a romp through the things of this world discarded along the way yet cradled and compacted in the mind’s catacombic kiln till that crushed dust of the Deep South becomes the tincture that just might save us in the end. In times like these, it seems like we’ve been waiting forever for this enchanted elixir, these Looney Tunes arising from our most unruly tongues.  – Timothy Liu

Available at Waterstones, Amazon, and select independent bookstores.

Book & Cover Design: The Scrutineer: Rachael Adams