We Can't Tell If the Constellations Love Us

A compelling new book for our times by the author of The Mouths of Grazing Things.

"I have long considered Jennifer [Oakes]'s poems to be works of magic, so perhaps WE CAN'T TELL IF THE CONSTELLATIONS LOVE US is a grimoire for our present moment, 'a field where lightning could ignite the world / if you could remember how to get there / and be lightning.' It's a book full of spells for cosmic empathy and word-amulets that can reverse time, transform a reckless species, or heal a single heart. But this spell book acknowledges the limitations of words, too, in poems where the oppositional--aging and adolescence, sex and depression--illustrates the inability to force language to make the meanings we desire. Fortunately, one impulse is always hidden inside the other, and so making life from death becomes [Oakes]'s greatest incantatory turn: 'Each spoken thing is a harness / to morning, which is far away, but promised, which is far away, / but coming with the light by which we'll assess the remains.' Thank goodness for poets and witches like this one." --Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms