About this book

“Rarely does a first book resolve itself so assuredly to such a singly consistent and instructive rhetoric as The Captain Lands in Paradise.” —Boston Review “While she may be ‘only trying to find my drink/ and to communicate without lying,’ Manguso accomplishes a great deal more.” —Publishers Weekly “Sarah Manguso’s poems weirdly plumb and strikingly frame what we’re up against: the now in which the Muse drives a silver pickup, mystery only announces itself out of grief for us, and to reach harbor is to understand there will be no end of searching. Hers is a startling, disturbing, and original voice.” —Carl Phillips “At times disarmingly straightforward, at others elegantly convoluted, Sarah Manguso’s poems evade and persuade us of the perils and fleshed restitutions of the imaging, mortal life. Again and again, their language inhabits the cusp between playfulness and dark revelation, between gaming and cri de coeur so we are torn, reading, between consolation and alarm. With an apocalyptic exuberance as well as the clarity of truthful recall, The Captain Lands in Paradise has an impact that belies its marvelously deft touch.” —Dean Young