If one wants to visit a world not of our own, not that of heaven, but some alternative universe, this is the book to guide your journey. Through Szporluk's underlying theme of questioning religion, she is able to create this world. Decisive wording allows the reader to elevate to her unique vision .

Reading the poetry of Larissa Szporluk can accurately be likened to wandering through the dreams of a stranger. Szporluk's laster collection Dark Sky Question is filled with mind boggling images, creating bizarre pictures of sweating monks, desperate woman and an earth that lives out a human-like exsistance, within the readers mind. The idea of a dream-like state of consciousness peppers the work, and although the actual purpose of the poems is sometimes lost to the reader, one cannot help but be struck by the awesome quality of Szporluk's prose. To read Dark Sky Question is almost like seeing a theatrical production; the viewer must drop their limiting cloak of reality and accept the given circumstances. Once they do, exploring the fantastical world of Szporluk's electrifying poetry can effect imagination and go beyond expectation.

To say Larissa Szporluk's poems are difficult to enter is wrong. I think I find them hard to exit; it is the return to the "real" world that is harrowing. One can connect to her poetry within its jurisdiction, its beauty often inclusive. Rapid-fire images rake the conscious mind, and leave deep sinuous cuts in the imagination that bleed into one another. Bats, cobras, mangoes shift around each other and we are guided, we the second person for the moment. "You should have gone further," she urges. But if we go so far as to leave, the blood coagulates and the holes try to patch themselves up. We reel in our attempt to understand what, while we were inside, made sense. The spinning ceases, as we know it must in her poem "Deliverer": "No one can spin forever. / It will all slow down." A kind of death sets in as we "can't see, can't feel." And maybe this is part of the point -- that we will only experience our life from within. To leave this viewpoint is to enter an unknown world (the world of Szporluk's wonderful poetry) where we do not know what to expect: "They say you hurried for the end. / A sudden recollection lights the wind."

She forces herself into stylistic extremes to make up for having nothing really to say. Basically all she said in this whole book that was almost interesting to me was that blood is water reddened by desire, & even that isn't so exciting. There are so many modern poets whose writing is far better, for instance such young modernists as Karen Volkman, Brenda Shaughnessy, Robyn Schiff, Joanna Goodman, & many, many others. Unlike Larissa Szporluck, they really say things & do things with their work.

This is not one of my favorite books. From the first few wandering poems, she doesn't seem like a poet of noteworthy vision. There are places in the book where the thinking is very interesting & the thoughts are indeed rewarding for the reader, but most of the poetry here is not wonderful. I do so much work to find interesting thoughts within these poems...& I read so little great merit of hers that's easy to find...that I'm not even sure how much of the reward I get from reading the book is self-generated. I mean you can find interesting thoughts anywhere in you're trying that hard. In any case, it is interesting to read the work of younger poets such as Szporluck to get a glimpse of the poetry of her generation. & it's not a TERRIBLE book. I just don't know how much of a career as a poet she has ahead of her.

I enjoyed this book greatly. Unlike most of the books I've read lately by younger poets (so hip and ironic and so fresh from their MFA programs), Szporluk manages to be clever without being pretentious and to write moving poems without being sentimental and ridiculous. I found this book a breath of fresh air.