I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of poets, essayists and short-story writers whose work I want to read more of after discovering them in literary journals. Many don’t yet have published collections, but Hibbard does, and she was at the top of my list after I read Uses for Salt.

The main topics of these 39 poems are lesbian desire, failed love, and men’s harm to women. But rather than thematic, the collection felt one-note – rehash and repetition, and I was disappointed.

So when I read a blurb on the back cover that praised Hibbard’s “well-wrought sestinas,” I took the opportunity to look up sestinas (ack! dizzying rules, though perhaps a fun puzzle for poets), find one in this collection and study it. Then I reread the poem, expecting my new appreciation to make a difference, but it didn’t. The repeating words were all there, in the right places, but I didn’t much notice their echoes. Still, I’m glad to have explored Hibbard. ( )