Like the masked deep sea diver on the cover, this collection of poems goes deep and its waters are international, ranging from Port Townsend to Moscow with many stops in between. Everywhere Ajaja brings up pithy bits of wisdom from the deeps, what Alexander Pope knew as epigrams, only this poet’s are far more original and striking: “Grief is a short word for a long phenomenon” or “Returning is like the horse that gallops forward frame by frame.” Or the one that for a time became the message on my phone answering machine: “History runs in one door and out the other / without being useful.”
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