Re-

Kristi Maxwell

These poem cycles explore relationships both human and linguistic. Responsive (and responses) to the multiple connections between words, the poems create a narrative where intimacy and sensuality are revealed in the spaces between: “Logic a device that keeps wonder at bay. / The bay where they docked and will dock again.” The repetitions-with-difference of Re- suggest that the seemingly contradictory notions of stability and change are reciprocal.

“Observing the ‘he and she’ of Kristi Maxwell’s Re- at close range is like watching animals mate in the wild; we recognize the patterns of their daily intercourse as universal, such as when, ‘in unison, spoons move to their mouths . . . Like they are tracing intentionally the flight pattern of a bird.’ But also universal to couples is constant flux, the give and take of two people morphing around and into and out of themselves and each other to maintain the balance of what they’ve created together. Maxwell captures this in lines that constantly move and evolve, too: ‘When he is an ox, she alternates / between onyx and field to be tediously / plowed.’ And: ‘in the acre allotted to masculine which is nonetheless a mask / she frisked with her tongue to find the stash / of him who is both and not.’ Maxwell’s is a rich, playfully serious (and seriously playful) language that shape-shifts right in step with ‘him and her,’ leaving us agape at the layered acrobatics of what keeps a couple in sync.” —Laura Sims