Visual artist Smirnova, who has worked on award-winning shows and films like Game of Thrones, Stranger Things and The Revenant, finds freedom on the page in this debut poetry collection, which employs sculpted free verse to make spiritual contact, or a spiritual contract, and create a space of belonging for the individual in a unified community of energy. “We are a pulse of heartbeats,” she writes, “pulses of ancestry // We are pulsars of the universe // and stars in someone’s sky.” Reversing the image of a person staring at the stars, Smirnova builds a bridge between the self and the cosmos and between the divisions of chronological time, all in clear, concrete language that communicates with emotional force but leaves open other possibilities and meanings.

Smirnova’s collection is structured by loosely bound sections, which can overlap in theme, form, and subject matter. The first section, titled “Nature,” contains an ecstatic homage to the natural world and its cycles and transformations, but also a questioning both scientific and spiritual: “Is there logic // or just an intuitive movement, // that brings together // a state of things?” The penultimate section, “Cities,” romanticizes the hum of concentrated humanity in the urban environment, but also addresses the contrasting loneliness one feels in a crowded space, a loneliness that echoes these relatable lines from the poem “Ice Breaker” in the “Love” section: “I boomeranged your thoughts // Looked in your soul for more // but couldn’t find.”

Introspection is also a frequent creative force as Smirnova’s poetry assesses the individual’s relationship to the universe but also the very concept of a self: “I am rebuilding myself // from ashes, // I am redrawing myself // from blank.” Rather than a fixed entity, the self here is, like nature, an ever-shifting journey. “One day you have to take a path,” Smirnova writes, “that is unique, that no one took,” and ultimately, the path itself “makes you the one”—and part of the oneness that carries everything.

Takeaway: Searching, of-the-moment poems on nature, love, and the path of the self.

Comparable Titles: Amanda Lovelace, Caroline Kaufman.

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Editing: A-
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