Recovered Body

the long version

The fourth collection of poems by Scott Cairns, Recovered Body, employs disarming language as it revises and gives new life to a wide range of familiar stories. Here, we overhear some of Wallace Stevens's late ruminations, we witness an erotic frolicking between poet and muse, and we receive an epistle on the subjects of love and the body from Mary Magdalen. The poet's richly cadenced style of storytelling offers theological poetry that leaves even the most cynical of readers nodding and grinning.