The Unwanted Sounds

Author: Lorraine Lupo

Publisher: Cuneiform Press (2022)

"If the 'unwanted sounds' in Lorraine Lupo's new collection of poems are implacable, they are also, and even more vividly, those odd orphans of daily life for which we feel a special affection and empathy. Acutely attuned to these, Lupo proposes a funny, beleaguered, bemused, and slightly haunted alter-ego who, while opining that it's 'not the fate of words / to make sense,' makes terrific sense out of words. Her observations are wry and often sneakily urgent in the matter of how to live. By definition never satisfied, in one poem she wants to 'eat cookies and donuts, hump trees, drink coffee, sleep running'; in the next she roams through the riches of real and missed experiences, reminding us that 'History isn't interesting / if you only remember one thing.' These are sounds you may not know you want but will be oh-so-lucky to have."

—Jean Day