SAVING FOR A MAUSOLEUM

Sanchez presents a set of poems that feature a lifetime of tiny moments and memories.

This collection of poems is divided into two parts: “The Light and Madness of Isopsephy,” and “A Table for Ghosts.” Lynne’s stunning illustrations are interspersed throughout: some full-page painterly images in muted browns and blues, ignited by unexpectedly vibrant fiery colors, others line drawings in the margins; many are of people and objects surrounded by nature. The book moves between various grand concepts, including the chasm between life and death that is the act of dying, and death itself, which is sometimes treated as melancholy, and at other times a relief. Early in the collection, the poem “Transgressions” points out that endings can’t be clear-cut, offering a warning to take nothing for granted: “And so it goes, the way of things, / the alliance of life and death— / always building tonight, what could be demolished when we rise.” Sometimes poems speak in the second person and evoke the voice of a mother, or, perhaps unassumingly, a mystic, as in “Stranger, Settler, Busybody”: “Sometimes this life is so vast and deep it’s hard to believe we hold every bit of it in / ourselves. Your heart is a hospice. / Everything is god, after all.” The collection includes prose poems that effectively capture every detail of a moment with sensory images, familiar similes, and tenderness. The edges of New York City colorfully provide the backdrops of many poems, such as the Hudson River in “The Calculation of Pressure on Coal” and rainy Brooklyn in “Parchment”: “The sidewalk is a smashed piñata of bodega umbrellas.” In “Acatalepsy and More,” the speaker finally asks: “What if, one day, the earth forgets we were ever here at all?” The poems approach death with honesty while honoring the complex majesty of life, which is, in turn, made more precious by virtue of its impermanence. The collection is strangely comforting, with engrossing micro-stories and transporting colors and details.

An exquisite book of poems about living and dying.