The Channel: Poems

A daredevil braiding of intimate and historical dramas, Jana Prikryl’s new poems aim to outrun her own “dazzling linguistic agility” (Louise Glück).

In her fluid and inexorable fourth book, Jana Prikryl summons Cordelia’s voice, harnessing the power of King Lear to think back through her family story and see more clearly our contemporary mad kings. Weaving short lyrics through experiments with the dramatic monologue, Prikryl runs tests on her own medium, the English language, the third langu...