Tuesday Marriage Death

The first poem in this fourth full-length collection by Theodore Worozbyt closes with an image that suggests a mythical bird, transcendence, unending wealth and success, caesarean birth, violent death, a surgeon lurking in the name of an ancient fish, and an end that comes as a beginning: "Golden eggs /slit from a sturgeon's belly finish it." So begins the undertaking, in this volume, to compress language itself into a ball, to roll it forth, not toward one overwhelming question, but to scores of them. If the title arcs a life with astonishing and unnerving brevity, and if most of those overwhelming questions remain unanswered, the title poem turns to us, on the final page, to offer the only human consolation we ever get to keep: "Let us begin again."