Sails the Wind Left Behind

the long version

“These poems do the remarkable job of making contemporary American poetry feel new again. Lynch takes risks at every turn, trying out new shapes in the mouth, flirting with narrative. . . . The poems operate at dizzying heights, and Lynch is so good she convinces the reader to climb just as high.” —*Ploughshares* “Alessandra Lynch possesses one of the most truly poetic imaginations I have ever encountered. Her metaphors slide seamlessly one into another and the logic of her illogic is so lucid I feel, reading her, like I’ve entered a new, a delightful land. This is a brilliant debut.” —Thomas Lux “Daring, disarming Alessandra Lynch is like a golden wind. She aims to envelope a reader in gusts of poems, transparent, yet mysterious. Lynch has much more than a story to tell—she has muses to consort with and animal identities to assume. Forget the homespun and the plainspoken. Here is poetry you can lose yourself in, be thrilled about, perplexed over, surprised and satisfied inside.” —Molly Peacock