Atria: Poems

“Refusing parallel movement, the hands/ Those empty frames. Imagine holding/ a Memory—or was it a photograph”

DS Waldman’s Atria is a breathtaking debut collection, experimental and elegiac in its every phrase. Guiding readers through exhibit halls of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, past the paintings of Basquiat and Frida Khalo, and through flashbacks to the poet’s childhood in rural Kentucky, Waldman’s poems pause to absorb color, peculiar shapes, and the memories evoked in their presence. Disability, the making and breaking of romantic partnership, and the loss of a brother punctuate the work, informing the speaker’s cascading meditations on art, poetry, and the possibilities of love and intimacy. This is a collection that both looks and reflects, turning years to be examined in new light under the poet’s keen gaze. An acute exploration of presence and absence, proximity and distance, Atria is a rich and prismatic debut from an arresting new voice in poetry.