Tryst: Volume 24

ANGIE ESTES is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Tryst (Oberlin College Press, 2009), named one of two finalists for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the

In her poem "Love Letters," Angie Estes writes, "I cover secrets, break me and read." And indeed, throughout Tryst, Estes' fourth and most personal collection, the poet gets straight to the heart of love, language, and memory. Details from the rural Appalachian lives of Estes' own family yield to meditations on '40s film stars, medieval saints, ancient Romans--and vice versa. We learn that gold leaf is applied with a brush fashioned out of squirrel tail, Nijinsky invented a fountain pen he called God, and female prisoners of the concentration camp at Terezin composed recipes to be tasted only in memory: all part of the human passion to create, destroy, and above all, be known. Estes' tryst here is with history and the way it absorbs everything and everyone, leaving words, those most articulate of witnesses, behind. Like the Roman Forum with its dizzying strata of time exposed, Tryst is layered, sad, magnificent, and made memorable in and because of language. Break. Read.