Sarah Vap's Variations on a Theme of Winter

Winter: Effulgences and Devotions, by Sarah Vap, is "a hybridized text, growing out of Vap’s daily writing praxis and out of the intellectual work of her dissertation," as Chris Freeman describes it in a new review at LARB. It is her seventh book; and in it, "Vap reveals what Marxists call the 'mode of production' on every page, in every poem." More:

 The work itself is created in stolen time, and it documents a personal and an intellectual journey. It embodies a commitment that is as admirable as it is daunting. The pacing is often staccato, with interruptions jarring the reader into a resounding halt, as evinced in a poem early in the volume, titled “Winter”: “And it makes me wonder — has this been a book, for all this time, / about trying to hear. About straining to perceive. And all of the / limitations. I.” This is an ars poetica moment, reflecting on the project, yes, and on writing poetry, but also on something we all do: wonder about our work, why we do it, how we do it.

[...]

We are with Sarah Vap in these moments and in these thoughts. She makes her experience ours. I don’t recall ever having felt closer to a poet as I was immersed in their work. There is a sharing here, a feeling of collaboration almost, even though Vap’s mind and material conditions are uniquely her own.

Near the center of the book, in a long poem called “Winter, a few years later,” Vap asks:

What happens if I smear a single question across time — who is
innocent, and for how long. What makes us...

Find the full review at Los Angeles Review of Books.