The Channel: Poems

A volatile concentration of intimate and historical dramas, Jana Prikryl's new book aims to outrun her own "dazzling linguistic agility" (Louise Glück)

In her electrifying fourth collection, Jana Prikryl harnesses the power of King Lear to look back at her family story and see more clearly our own mad kings, our hunger for authority. Listening for Cordelia as a dissenter banished from home, Prikryl finds that outside her native tragedy the silent woman has more to say. The centuries and sett...