like a solid to a shadow

“like a solid to a shadow is a primer for how to seek in absence and grief the language one needs to get through. ‘What if there are no records.’ Sapigao asks, wondering if the document is what verifies a lived life. What she discovers, and reveals to us, is that poetry is the record and process, the thing that can handle all the holes and remnants, allowing us to feel and think the fullness of that absence, and to discover there the shadows of what ‘was is’ left unsaid. These poems show us the space both before and ‘after indigo finishes / its shift.”

“Janice Lobo Sapigao’s like a solid to a shadow is a collection about turning the traces of a story into the story itself. Here is a book that uncovers the dual nature of language. Even as it fails to bring the dead solidly back to life, every utterance resurrects that vitality. In using the rules of grammar throughout, the book highlights the ways that translation, at its essence, is unruly. The book’s many-layered structures of explication-ranging from maps, to FB messages, to family-tree diagrams, to textbook excerpts-are components of a recovery project, both bringing Sapigao’s father back, but also, in promoting her psychic and emotional healing.”