Cristiana Baik reviews Sophie Robinson’s first full-length collection, a, for the Boston Review‘s March/April 2010 issue. Baik has previously written about Robinson’s work for the BR Footnote, a project of the Boston Review interns.

a’s language articulates mourning less through hyperbolic personal account and more through hyperbolized language: “Losses what we losses remember losses all over / losses ourselves.” “Geometries,” the second and least allusive part of the book, wonderfully shapes the emotions of rage and grief through loose sonnets, written in a rapid, feverish language: “Beauty is nothing is nothing is a / gently disgusting residue of all / that burps and smiles.” Although a borders on elegy, it retains an elusive elegance beyond the reach of categorization.

Read the full review at the Boston Review.