The Republic of the Husband

Lucy Tunstall's striking début collection features a cast of characters ranging from Paul Muldoon and Marianne Moore to Aunt Jane, who fell in love "in 1956, or thereabouts," and Cousin Gillian, who keeps the family's long-case clock in her caravan. Using a variety of registers and forms, including dramatic monologue, lyric, collage, and found text, Tunstall explores poetry's negotiations of truthfulness and theatricality, accuracy, and artifice. Perceptive and humorous, but never sentiment...