Grammar

At turns beautiful and disconcerting, Grammar presents us with a thought-provoking portrayal of language as it is transfigured by our usage, offering readers a graceful matching of form and content all the while.
Read the in-depth review from the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University

Grammar is a marvelous investigation of the relational quality of words, the ways we inhabit them and they us. What emerges in these poems is a celebration of the unruly and insubordinate realm of the human. We live among the pauses of these “known unknowns,” anchored in the physical yet mysterious to the core.—Elizabeth Willis

In her eloquent evocation of grammar, Elizabeth Savage tells us that “The elements won’t recognize/person, place, or thing …only movements of the same.” And so the very structure of communication proves pliable, responsive, overflowing with both history and heart. At the beginning of this gorgeous book, Savage warns us that “there is no ‘I’ in grammar,” but the feat of her writing is to show us that “where there is urgency/there will be utterance.” Language stands at the ready, our “provocative partner” in whose vehicle “I may step/imperatively/into you.” Amid the false starts and scattered belief that pulse at the core of our relation to words, Grammar deploys considerable sass and jazz while also opening to a vulnerability that displaces function with a more compassing dynamic. Here, language sweeps us up, until we “swing from force/to formlessness” in radiant attention.—Elizabeth Robinson