Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The personal and the persona, the historical and the present, the real and the surreal, the fragmented and the lucid all converge in Green Regalia as Tavel guides us from poem to poem with lithe, logical leaps and surprising connections. Tavel masterfully creates a space of dark and disturbing beauty: "My gift," he tells us, "is a small token wrapped hysterically with the obituary page." Here, poems of absence and presence, grief, death, addiction, self-destruction, and family and societal violence reverberate off of, and augment, one another. Tavel's exquisite use of language and sensory-filled images invite us into empathy and the deeper meanings that are at the heart of this collection. Unflinching, at times visceral, these poems refuse to look away, and we are the richer for it.