Trane DeVore on Michael Sikkema’s May Apple Deep

by Jen Tynes

Trane DeVore has some nice and right-on things to say about May Apple Deep over at Goodreads. So nice and right-on we’re just going to reprint them right here:

This beautiful book is full of consciousness thinking the world into existence, and then abolishing it at the next turn of thought. Sometimes almost a lyric being born, but then suddenly a swerve into a register that resists the clichés of lyric voice. Slow movement through the drift of words is full of unexpected delights, like having the kind of dream that takes you from trick to trick so that you wake up laughing. “The idea is / the music makes / your somewhere else face for you.” Reading this book closely will allow your somewhere else you to be your somewhere else you.

It’s a chapbook (i.e., short), but perfectly paced, with just enough alternations in tone, style, and form to keep things interesting, but not so many that it starts to feel like a rogues gallery. It will leave you perfectly satisfied, and wanting more.