(Solve for) X

Coles’s eighth collection probes the X of the unknown and of gender chromosomes with provocative smarts and sensitivity.

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.

Katharine Coles is the author of two novels, eight collections of poems, the essay collection The Stranger I Become, and the memoir Look Both Ways. The recipient of grants from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation, she has served as Poet Laureate of Utah and was inaugural director of the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. She is a distinguished professor of English at the University of Utah.