Sometimes Full of Daylight

Sometimes Full of Daylight, the debut full-length collection of poetry by Owen Lewis, asks us to embark on ajourney through a life-we begin with the walls wanting to fall in, hit by "all the storms at once," and from there wefind ourselves everywhere from the schoolyard where "the boy is tinder," to family births and deaths, divorce, andthe love that comes after. Lewis' deftness in juxtaposition continuously brings the quotidian image to life, whether asa glimmer of hope, or a swift devastation: "How the family felt / your leaving? We waited. // A bank of votivecandles twisting in light."In "Bellagio," the long poem at the center of the book, the speaker confronts a statue of Dante, asking, "Are youlonely / in your myths of love?" Aimed at both the past and the future, this question echoes throughout thecollection. Here, "air and water and stone / become ideas" and the words for love are "syllables belonging to nolanguage." Many of the poems are rooted in nature, both in its serenity and its storms. We come across "the lastazalea" and a sea of "slow mourning anemones," but in the turmoil of the human experience, "the ex-boyfriendbeating her / into a swollen bruised sponge," the speaker seeks refuge in the natural world, "the lake fog in the latemorning clearing." Again and again, Lewis reminds us that we can be "sometimes full of daylight," even as "we arestarved / for things of the earth that go beyond the earth."