Cassie Pruyn's Lena asks new questions: why we love, why we grieve. We've read elegies before, but not like this. A lush and unsparing first book,

Lena asks readers to understand love--crucially, a first love, an erotic love-in the context not of a love lost but instead of an identity gained: we must consider not only was she worth it?, but also who has she made me? Pruyn lets us feel what lovers feel--the magnetism, the physicality, the tenderness, the rage, the wondering--with language both musical and visceral. In these poems, the landscape is a character in itself; the past is as tangible as the present. Pruyn takes us to the Lost Love Lounge, we ride in a car / red as a dragon, and we observe the beloved stick herself in the belly with a needle in the way she used to attach her cufflinks. This is love and grief raised to the highest power; it is a debut not to be missed.