Punctum:

“In Punctum:, Lesley Jenike’s new collection, she writes, ‘It’s our language: what can we call a thing that is and is not.’ These poems are haunted by a ‘non-child,’ a child who was not to be born, and with it, a life the speaker was not to live. Absence itself becomes a nearly tangible presence. I don’t know how Jenike does it—breaks your heart and makes you want more—but I can’t remember the last time I read poems as smart and sure and devastatingly precise in their language, imagery, and...