Two Bowls of Milk

The poems of Stephanie Bolster’s second collection move with delicacy and power, whether focussing on a flock of snow geese on a flooded plain, on the paintings of Jean Paul Lemieux, or on two wasps in a Pepsi can on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These intimate acts of language create a space infused with stillness and an edgy expectation. Here is a poetry of engagement and mystery, in which truth is found in seepage and reversal: the bowls of milk the colour of milk; the two facing human profiles forming between them the shape of a vase. This volume sketches a clear, unwavering arc through poems sometimes raw and painful, but always exquisite, and, ultimately, transformative. Two Bowls of Milk confirms Stephanie Bolster as one of the most gifted new poets in Canada today.