About Andrea Cohen’s poems, Chris­t­ian Wiman has said: ​“One is caught off guard by their cumu­la­tive force. This is work of great and sus­tained atten­tion, true intel­li­gence, and soul.” In The Sor­row Apart­ments, Cohen’s eighth col­lec­tion, those sig­na­ture gifts are front and cen­ter, along with sly humor, relent­less econ­o­my, and the hair­pin curves of gut-punch wis­dom. How quick­ly Cohen takes us so far:

Bunker

What would I
think, com­ing

up after
my world

had evap­o­rat­ed?
I’d wish

I were water.

The Sor­row Apart­ments is home to spare and uncan­ny lyri­cism – – as well as leap­ing nar­ra­tives of mys­tery and loss and won­der. These poems race at once into the past and the pos­si­ble. And yet, instead of hold­ing things up to the light for a bet­ter view, Cohen lifts them to the dark and light, as in ​“Aca­pul­co,” where an unlike­ly com­pan­ion points out, ​“as men tend to, / the stars com­pris­ing Orion’s belt — / as if it were the lus­trous sparks and not / the lev­el­ing dark that con­nects us.” For a poet who has been called unfash­ion­able from the get-go, unfash­ion­able nev­er looked so good.