River Electric with Light

Sarah Wetzels stunning second collection of poems, River Electric with Light, is a work of pilgrimage, a work in search of the sacred and the spiritually significant. Touching down in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Kabul, New York, and Rome, Wetzels poems, ranging from lyric meditations to discursive drama, weave themselves from her life as wife, lover, stepmother, and traveler. She names the force propelling her RiverIf I must choose a word for you, / let it be the word / for what flows, she writes. At times joyful, at times grief-ridden, Wetzels poems accumulate associatively pulling slivers of secular solace from a world where violence infuses the body, the landscape, and even dreams, recognizing that while: Our lives are always half over. / Theres still time.