Floating is Everything
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Sheryda Warrener’s second poetry collection touches on the illusion of remaining grounded and a sense of belonging. A retired cosmonaut returns from a record-breaking 438 days in space and attempts to re-immerse himself in the world. One speaker considers reinvention from the top floor of the World’s Tallest building; another, our complicated future from Reykjavik, post-eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. Confessions and aspirations suspend in air. Ghosts float in and out; inheritance and connection are called into question. Morrissey, Cindy Sherman, and Pancho Barnes make cameo appearances. Influence and personal lineage are traced back to the Vikings, demoted Pluto, artists frequenting a Parisian bar. One speaker confides: “Yes, she’s longing to be elsewhere. Just past the sun deck there’s something invisible worth having.” In Floating is Everything, a resolution lies nearly always out of reach.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Warrener (Hard Feelings) charts wide territory in this collection of meditations on connection, isolation, bereavement, and firmament. Through three interconnected sections, Warrener traces the orbits of celestial and terrestrial bodies while navigating longing and remorse. Warrener's language is crisp and controlled, though that ends up working against the book more than for it: much of the poetry skims the surface of its subjects. Readers are always taken aloft by Warrener's work, but seldom does it soar, and the return to earth is neither generous nor gentle. Even that grounding that potentially heady impact has no weight to it. The entire collection feels on the cusp of something but never quite achieves it. As an aspirational endeavor, the collection is a good effort but not an efficacious one. The last line of the book sums up its contents too well: "Just past the sun deck there's something invisible worth having." In the poetry, as in that sentiment, there's great earnestness, but the engagement with the work is always just out of reach.
