Around the Block

Like her three earlier books, Emily Axelrod's Around the Block offers us the profound sensibility subtly underlying the author's poems. Quietly rhythmic and mostly "quiet," these elegant verses treat the mundane like the sacred it actually is. Always alert for the telling detail, Axelrod transports us effortlessly from sweet and capricious childhood to reflective and melancholy old age -- from "pluck [ing] juicy plums" and dancing to "Earth Angel" to visiting her beloved beach with friends whose stiff bodies are "content in the warmth / of the waning sun."

This is a book about a life and all the lives encircling it. Sad and thrilling stories of children, grandchildren, fathers, and cousins, as well as a long and rewarding marriage. And there is always nature and the boundless sea, which reside in the author's very bones. Eventually, the reader becomes a passenger in this remarkable work, a conveyance not unlike "the ferry carrying us / in its rocking embrace."

-Alec Solomita, author, Do Not Forsake Me (2017) and Hard to Be a Hero (Kelsay Books, 2022)

Emily Axelrod's fourth poetry collection, Around the Block, vividly dwells on the poet's loss of close friends, memories of travel, and the sorrows of our age. Her poems are always clear, economical, and reflective. The moments she captures hold our attention. I always keep a keen eye out for this poet's new work.

-Katia Kapovich