Looking Out

Laura Altshul's Looking Out combines moving poems of introspection with those that offer close observation of the outer world. She is able to be at one with the natural world and also has an electric way of submerging herself in the lives of others. Adept at achieving Keatsian "negative capability," she often projects herself into other speakers to give us insight into their struggles for survival. However, not all her portraits are entirely sympathetic, as when she describes a mother-in-law who "swanned in fur and jewels, demanding homage." Altshul's language never wilts because she excels in selecting precise and imaginative diction, and she is a master of the telling detail. In a searing poem about the war in Syria, she makes the devastation graphic and personal by focusing on a cup of coffee covered in cement and plaster "from the blast." Read these magnificent poems with care as if you were gathering shells, and in each one you will find "a shell within a shell, a wondrous surprise."