At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series)
Contemplative and intimate, Bridget Lowe’s At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky is an uncommonly mature debut. Her poems conduct a forensic inquiry into ways to heal the rifts between mind and body, the traumatic wars between our animal and spiritual selves. With an artful integration of feeling and technique, she interweaves evidence drawn from her own experience and the lives of figures like The Wild Boy of Aveyron, a pilgrim, a forgotten actress, Nijinsky. These thwarted souls, reminiscent of Chekhovian characters mystified by their own erratic behavior and disappointments, are memorably etched. In her poems, Lowe interprets the tragic conundrums of life with empathy and analytic clarity. At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky is a waking dream filled with somber, beautiful images, and echoes, resonances, and leitmotifs that create a plaintive music the reader will return to again and again. (Herbert Leibowitz)