Sit Down Traveler

The telephone psychic with her tarot deck fanned out before her: so does Harwell embrace the poet's dual role of seeker and oracle. As the vagaries of existence turn the mundane uncanny and back again, the poet craves insight but is suspicious of its sources. Accidental death, love's slow-motion estrangement, the astonishments of parenthood—boredom, grief, and joy alike are voracious and unsparing. Harwell's language is often blunt, often playfully oblique, as she looks askance at metaphors...