The Disorder of Love

Not since Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has a poet explored so unforgivingly the territory of sexual passion and that passion's decay. In The Disorder of Love, Karen Connelly travels beyond - into the sometimes wild, sometimes quietly vibrant realm of the body: the body of the self, of new lovers and old friends, of modern and ancient landscapes. Despair has a spirit here, as does the complicated architecture of everyday life.

But what is most remarkable in this collection comes at the end, when the poet gives us the rare, sweet chaos of joy.