We Swallow(ed) Spiders in our Sleep, Zachary C. Bush. Columbus, OH: Pudding House Publications, 2007. $10.00. 1-58998-580-X

This chapbook focuses on the angst of the 20-something, that liminal state between the naivete of childhood and the cocoon of settled-down adulthood, when all the world seems not quite as bright as we’d have liked to believe just a few years earlier. This is one of the most difficult age groups to write about, and yet when it succeeds, the results can spark revolutions. This is something I’ve always found interesting—what could be more tense and meaningful than the struggle to make a life, and yet, it’s so rarely captured with aplomb. Partly to blame, I think, is the trend of substituting self-imposed suffering for the real struggle inherent in the 20-something life, mistaking drug use (self-abuse) for the everyday abuses people of this age are just beginning to have to endure, which can be much more meaningful. Bush is guilty of the odd drug reference, but he balances them nicely with the looking-down-the-barrel-of-the-world struggle to make sense of a slightly-shifted world.

Bush’s poems are well crafted, with much attention paid to form and word choice. The collection abounds with classical references, relationship struggles, and a kind of contained rage that, taking into account the innovative uses of form, comes off quite compelling.

-CL Bledsoe