The Sorrow Apartments

About Andrea Cohen’s poems, Christian Wiman has said: “One is caught off guard by their cumulative force. This is work of great and sustained attention, true intelligence, and soul.” In The Sorrow Apartments, Cohen’s eighth collection, those signature gifts are front and center, along with sly humor, relentless economy, and the hairpin curves of gut—punch wisdom. How quickly Cohen takes us so far:

Bunker

What would I
think, coming

up after
my world

had evaporated?
I'd wish

I were water.
The...