(Solved For) X

by Katharine Coles

Katharine Coles’s (Solve for) X opens a window in a room we did not realize was stuffy. The rigidity of knowledge yields to the beauty of the search, which is both captivating and mysterious. Organized as an abecedarium, the poems are couched in spare, emotionally charged diction that plumbs consciousness and moral responsibility. Coles meditates on an imaginary sister, impositions of the body on the mind, and the human mess that remains despite death or disaster. The mastery of how Coles writes and what she knows is matched only by her ease with the uncertain X. In (Solve for) X, she breaks down contrary ideas and reassembles them, harmoniously redesigned.

112 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2022

About the author

Katharine Coles(born ) is an American poet and educator. She served from 2006-2012 as Utah's third poet laureate and currently serves as the inaugural director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute and the co-director of the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature.

Coles earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington. She later earned a master's degree from the University of Houston and her Ph.D from the University of Utah.

Coles received the PEN New Writer’s Award in 1992. Her 2001 poetry collection, The Golden Years of the Fourth Dimension, received the Utah Book Award. In 2012, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Taylor Napolsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how complex this book is, experimental and illusive, to the point that some might think it’s too detached, but I don’t; I just ran with it the whole way, reading it and rereading, loving the parts I didn’t understand and also taking pleasure in the simple moments—because there are whole poems that are easy to follow!—and those ones mixed with the uncertainty and abstraction is a terrific balance.

There’s so much “lostness” in this book, just kind of swimming along, not sure what we’ll get at.