The Middle

The Middle is beautiful and powerful-Angela Hume's line breaks are beautiful and powerful-her pages are beautiful and powerful-and all that grace animates calm outrage, ghostlier awareness ("private like a thought / for a wrist, of a thigh"), keener sounds ("try looking away try looking away try looking away try looking away try looking away try")-keener ethics, too (first / demarcate // an aesthetics of / / injury")-the body is ghost-polis is eyes but police is eyes too-and polis is police ("state of pacifi / cation state of // damage state of / destroy-all-ex // cess body state of little / to no // speech / ill / state // police / state")-we have to have political poetry-we can't be human otherwise-and what holds here is a new Objectivism-a clarity made actual in a construct of words ("(inhabit that / incision // in such a way that can't be used")-this clarity holds against and in the violence that surrounds us (Benjamin: "something rotten in law is revealed")-Angela Hume is a necessary poet.