Perhaps the most informative line in Raisa Tolchinsky’s debut collection comes in the middle of the last poem, “Canto 1” when she writes, “I packed my bags, said I will be my Virgil/in the story I could never quite begin. /Where to begin?” It is in this moment, this line, that the role of our poet/subject is confirmed: this collection is a seventy page journey to the dark places and experiences of our young poet hero, her ascension from that place, and the light of her future in the world.

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