Graph of Life by Paul Ilechko

“These poems master mortality in a way that is ummatched. When I read the first poem: “The Milk Song:” a short poem that takes me through the “The milk-weave of morning,” through images of whiteness revealed to “The Milky Way, no longer visible as the white sun rises” encomposing the projection of life against darkness contradicted and then encompassed by a whiteness that becomes everything that is dark and light I knew that I was reading a poem like and unlike no other.

The poems in this chapbook capture all these contradictions in beauty and loss. Read on and experience this again and again. And so …near the end:

“The naked man stands, emulating the nakedness of black branches, standing silhouetted against the red of another approximation of morning. He watches as the sun continues to rise, up over the roofs of his city, beyond all experience.”

There is more… a vastness present always… the vastness and strangeness of existence that these poems capture and contradict. “