Lauren Carter’s Following Sea (Turnstone, 2019) is one of those rare books of poetry can make a person lose sleep. In this case, that person was my husband. As I lie in bed reading Carter’s new book, I kept nudging my husband awake.

“You gotta hear this!” I’d say, quoting from one poem or another. He vowed to sleep in another room the next night. That promise never came to pass. Carter’s Following Sea is also one of those rare books of poetry that you can devour in a single sitting.

While most poetry is best digested slowly, after small, even tentative nibbles, Carter’s sharp and vulnerable writing makes it difficult to put her book down. This paradox is what makes her work so compelling: it’s stark, starved, but also palpably fleshy and vital.

From the poem, Barren:

where did my future go, why

is my body a bone
dry field that only dust

will know.

Then, from Louth (1851):

first babies
were born close, the crowded,

wet litter of a cat.

You can see what I mean. There’s the dryness—a hopelessness, but there’s also the vigour of life renewing itself. Interestingly, however, the poems that have the most raw vitality are the ones that deal with her family’s history—a past Carter was not a part of. Consider again the excerpt from Barren: her present seems more dead than the lives of her dead relatives, which are teeming with life; “the crowded wet litter of a cat.” This strange reversal beautifully underscores immense feelings of loss and purposelessness, ironically adding more power and vivacity to the poems about the present through the very emptiness that defines them.

Despite dealing with heavy, engulfing topics like infertility, identity and complex, multi-generational family histories, Following Sea offers space; it takes its time. There’s importance attached to her poems, but not urgency. Each word, every line break lingers even as it draws you on, breaking your heart while also offering comfort in the shared experience of our great tragedies, and greater loves.

Bring home your copy of Following Sea. Keep it by your bedside, on your coffee table, or in your bag. The point is this: keep it close. Carter’s poems are meant to endure, and help us endure.