Wolf Devouring a Wolf Devouring a Wolf

Having written a book called Wolf Centos that opens with the quote "All the poetry has wolves in it, Pam," how could I not be entranced by a book such as Wolf Devouring a Wolf Devouring a Wolf, given the ways in which Cassandra Whitaker so exquisitely and recursively renders poem after poem, queering and querying the image of the wolf, writing "Quite like a wolf, but queer. Like hunger / for the moon, except joyous /instead of empty." These are brilliant missives of illumination and transformation that employ wolves, to paraphrase Larry Levis, as emblems of contemplation and examination for what has often been silenced within. Weaving their way through loneliness, emptiness, and hunger, Whitaker crafts an Angela Carter universe where "The wolf unzipped / its fur and slipped out, /a doe"; and where, even in the midst of anger and peril, "the doe began / to sing." This book is that singing and it is marvelous.

-Simone Muench