Delinquent Palaces

What does it mean to pray or praise in the twenty-first century? What does it mean to lament, to attend? In this volatile, visionary debut collection, Danielle Chapman seeks “to be known / in one’s own person as crocuses are known / by sun, conceiving green to breathe it / for ravishment by light.” Driven toward stark landscapes and “nowheres” of the spirit, these poems steadfastly seek the lyrical and spiritual promise implicit in difficulty—where “spring sing[s] slime / through snail stones” and “the river’s cashmere roiled.” Chapman’s work testifies to the revelation and the anguish of love, and to the possibility of finding grace in the “interstices of pain / where God’s green / meets man’s limestone.” These hard-edged, wry, and intricately musical poems deliver a life that has been felt to its limits, and transformed into singular art.