Make Space by J. A. Lagana

J. A. Lagana’s brilliant, debut collection of poems, Make Space, is a stunning testament to loss and a keen reminder of hope and resilience. With masterful use of white space, Lagana creates luminous gems, with breathy and seemingly breathless interjections. Exploring the depths of grief and loss, and the dreamlike mosaic of healing, the speaker makes space for grief and memory, and even reconciliation and hope, in a tapestry woven by “What grief said.” The intensely personal touches the universal here. But what is tapped is what experience is at the profound level. This is a book of emotional depth and technical proficiency. Moreover, there is a zen-like quality that often moves these poems to transcend the physical while remaining grounded by realization and a reconciliation with loss. The river that bridges New Jersey and Pennsylvania and runs through this book is a touchstone of moving forward (“Listen / for the chime of river water / moving through ice”). This is a superb collection to return to and immerse oneself in. This is a poet to watch for more great things.

–Donna J. Gelagotis Lee, author of Intersection on Neptune and On the Altar of Greece 

Never have I seen a collection of poems where grief is gifted the space to speak, but Make Space gives us that and so much more. Make Space is full of tenderness and a grief that says “I won’t always interfere. / I promise.” J. A. Lagana is a poet of endless roads, the orange moon and everything else in this world that interrupts our whirling despair to demand a moment of our attention for the sake of beauty. Make Space is simultaneously a title and an instruction of the poet for how to move within—how to move against—an interior cut smaller and smaller by loss. Make space, for the world and all the living there is still to do.

–C.T. Salazar, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre Books 2022)