Synopsis "26 Letters for My Love: & Other Incendiary Devices"
Twenty-Six Letters for My Love and Other Incendiary Devices is a single book of poems consisting of three parts. The book tells a story, in loosely connected poems, of a relationship, that relationship's interruption by the world, and one of the lover's reaction to the world. The first section, "Twenty-Six Letters for My Love," is a wild exploration of a poet's ability to measure, describe, and convey what Love is. The poems in this section vary in intensity. They question the possibility of a perfect relationship in an imperfect world. They celebrate love, life, and sensuality in various forms. They mix a variety of allusions (most often literary, artistic, and scientific), which often stimulate an immediate gut reaction and impression that does not require the reader to investigate further to understand, although investigation furthers understanding. "Late Breaking News" marks the world's interruption of love. It is only the naïve who think the world has no effect upon them and the greater that naivety the more jarring the interruption. The speaker in these poems is jarred. These poems teeter between reality and fantasy, history and fairytale, hope and desperation, and love and hate. "Other Incendiary Devices" is composed of the violent imagery of war and love. It turns away from reality and inhabits a dreamlike state where rants, confessions, and hallucinations are the currency. Some lovers realize that one (or both) of the lovers in the relationship was to blame for its dissolution, that the love they experienced simply was not meant to be, and move on. The speaker in the final section of the book feels that the world itself was to blame and instead decides it is the world that was not meant to be. This precarious vantage point results in haunting lyrical explorations of loneliness, longing, desperation, hate, and hope.
