Robin Reagler’s gorgeous, fierce collection Night Is This Anyway spills over with “an ocean of music.” The forcefield throughout these poems is Eros –– the strange attractors of planets, people and story in “erotic communication.” Nothing is too other, lowly or ordinary to be excluded from the affinities of Reagler’s poems which touch into anime, bodies, time, desire, clouds, sex, otters, x-rays, neighbors, ambulances, an armadillo, chaos, cat drawings, nightmare, tulips, DJs, lovers, lip gloss and more music. This list is not exhaustive. There is a wide “beyondable spectrum of yes” in these wild and unruly pages which includes each of us, every reader and distant star, lost animal, in shared revelation.
“I am the always of walking, and you
are the destination, the pure,
unremarkable but beautiful half-sun.
I aim my poem at you. Every poem is
for you.”
Meredith Stricker, author of five poetry collections, recipient of the National Poetry Series Award and co-director of visual poetry studio.
About the Author
Robin Reagler, winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz, and the UK’s Best Book Award, writes poetry and essays. She is the author of Dear Red Airplane (Seven Kitchens, 2011, 2018), Teeth & Teeth (2018), and Into The The (2020). Her writing has been published in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, North American Review, and other journals.
Reagler is passionate about the power of education. For 22 years she led Writers in the Schools, and in that time the organization engaged half a million young people in the joy of self-expression. Now she is an English professor at Houston Community College.
