Sara Wainscott's The Star Cabinsis a profound exploration of the self's melt through language acquisition, pattern, and loss. The speaker of this expansive long poem morphs between selves: writer, mother, reader, daughter, drifter, lover, and witness while questioning the limits and obligations of each. "Too long alone an I becomes a you / Positioned on a high dive," Wainscott writes in the book's pressurized couplets that balance a tender vulnerability alongside wolfish, piercing ferocity. The Star Cabinsis a sonically brilliant and formally daring inquiry into death and what it means to accompany the dying, to endure absence, and to recognize "A good life that's slow / And over at the right time // Belongs not even to the clouds."
