Shoulder Season

Exacting, virtuosic lyrics on surviving tough times.

With a title that plays upon “shouldering” one’s burden, this equally fanciful and hard-hitting collection captures the uncertainties and economic turmoil of 21st century life, where the mind might still be “a little spa,” but the future “is hedged against the / boys who died.” Like the New Yorker said of her last collection, “[Mlinko’s] intoxicating, cerebral poems display a unique sense of humor and mystery.”