These Pink Cocoons of Ice

A blazing new arrival on the poetry scene, Danae Young writes from the blurred intersection of race, gender, and sexuality.

With this book we hail the arrival of an electrifying new voice on the poetry scene. Though to be clear, Danae Younge has already "arrived" with a blitz of poems published in journals domestic and international while still an undergraduate. And no wonder, with poems like "A Girl Walks Home Alone" containing the chilling lines "My friend's rapist was the sweat-mark of a body / against oozing bulbs, a stripped suit lifted from grimed flooring, / made animate, thrusting as if by strings--pretending to be man." Writing from the blurred intersections of race, sexuality, and gender, she confronts "Questions of how we survive, / or flourish" in the face of violence. She makes dazzling experiments with form (in the tour-de-force "26 Seconds of Sacrifice" the biblical sacrifice of Abraham is woven through an account of a night in the life of a "15-year old girl ... Proving she was worthy to be one of the guys who shared an e-cig before making it home"), sometimes shattering words in the process. Infinity signs appear throughout, as if to say that there is only so much that language alone can express. For anyone who still questions the vitality and centrality of poetry at this moment, Danae Younge and THESE PINK COCOONS OF ICE are all the evidence needed.