At Risk

In her fourth poetry collection, At Risk, Teresa Cader reflects on suffering, survival, and the defiant force of love--what Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska identified in herself as "rapture and despair." Many of Cader's poems bear familial witness to the same brutal historical landscape and its forced immigration; others explore risks to self, identity, and survival in contemporary America. All are linked by a compassionate imagination, stunning imagery, wit, sonic beauty, and Cader's characteristically striking juxtapositions: Homer appears in a peacock on the poet's sun deck; Bruno Schulz talks back to Elon Musk about colonizing Mars; in 1913 an infant is sent through the mail for 15 cents; a Polish cousin released from Auschwitz conjures his love as an alabaster figurine on the sea. Masterful in metrical, free, and formal verse, At Risk reminds us of the threats to our survival and the sources of our resilience in a lyric voice of distinctive power.