Zackary Lavoie

Upheavals Zackary Lavoie

"Rhubarb grows from rhizomes, releasing its body wherever conditions prove favorable. Similarly, Zackary Lavoie's poems in Upheavals contain those rhubarb-like qualities of disruption and alteration, an I that vanishes and reappears in the natural world, in the city, in the sacred, and back in a corporeal body. There is a rich curiosity in Lavoie's poems that reminds me of how Elizabeth Bishop, Matthew Henriksen, Neruda, Blake, and William Carlos Williams devise imagery in their works. "if i could create // a religion i would pray to trees and call them mother," Lavoie claims in world replete with myth, flora, and longing. These poems will meander like rivers to "fill [your] bell[ies] with pebbles," and you won't soon forget their humming." -Roy G. Guzmán, author of the forthcoming collection, Catracho, from Graywolf Press