Bugonia, Bugonia & Other Poems

Rachel Robb’s collection “Bugonia, Bugonia & Other Poems” is ambitious and measured, attentive to what a poem can truly hold. They are poems the reader inhabits — ones to return to and get lost in — and they return to you in kind. Accomplishing this is a feat. It demonstrates a keen sensitivity to the pressure a poem’s conceit can bear, and to what line and language can quietly carry. Robb meets that high standard, and her poems stand out because they trust the everyday. Yet what lingers is something stranger: a slow, labyrinthine settling.