Red Rover

“What we cannot fail to hear, in Red Rover, is a wise and troubled lullaby for what may yet prove to be the infancy of our species.”

“Stewart offers sequences and serial poems that move across historical time, and continually reveal the ominous hiding in the innocuous, or vice versa (“burning bread smells like / baked earth”). . . . This gathering of poems, with their masterful cadences, allegorically pitched narratives and various speakers “bound / deep to old griefs and wonder,” build toward an indictment of aggression and war. . . . These poems ask the reader to register anew, from ’small changes of perspective,’ the darker implications [of] what we take for granted.”

“In these elegantly crafted poems, Stewart cocks her head and looks at the world a little differently, capturing an owl’s flight, a boy’s voice, a terrible massacre in beautiful but unfussy language that wants to communicate. No nursery rhymes here but instead a deep understanding of the edginess and violence that seep unbidden into our lives.”

“Stewart’s formal dexterity enriches the book as form and content palpably influence one another. . . . This range creates a sense of profusion that complements the book’s redemptive vision of the natural world.”