Calvocoressi’s work was recommended to me, not by other poets, but by fiction writers, and I immediately understood its appeal. Generally, when fiction writers like your work, it means your poetry has just enough narrative juice to keep them interested. As an MFA grad and sporadic poet myself, I’m a little jealous of Calvocoressi’s success, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admit that she’s got chops. Her new collection, Apocalyptic Swing, isn’t within my area of interest, but it has a tight structure and a strong line of inquiry throughout.

Calvocoressi’s most notable stylistic choice is that she frequently writes in the voice of historical people, a technique that she used in Amelia Earhart and continues to use throughout her new book. Calvocoressi also has the courage and skill to write about the Big Stuff without becoming sappy: there’s a lot of God in this book, and some Sex, some things about Mother, and -- juxtaposed against those themes -- boxing. When talking about the ‘absolutes’ in life, boxing makes sense as a metaphor. Jacob may have wrestled with an angel, but Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear and in return has become a 21^st century sinner turned martyr: the guy who’s paid for our cultural sins of greed, sexual promiscuity, and excess.

Calvocoressi doesn’t write about Tyson, but in “Blues for Ruby Goldstein” she writes in the voice of a little known boxer nicknamed “the jewel of the ghetto.” After competing in the ‘20s and ‘30s, Goldstein went on to a career as a referee. The poem, like most of her work, is written in plain, unfettered language. It opens with a view of a ghetto neighborhood street at “sunset when the streets get/ quiet”

     What does anybody
     know about a body anyway?
     It can take a worse beating than most
     can imagine. You can get every rib broken
     and your eyes punched shut and your kidneys
     can bleed like you see at the butcher.

This smart shift from idyllic sunset to bleeding human kidneys is emblematic of another of the book’s signature techniques: alternating between beautiful, nearly maudlin passages to images of human brutality. As Goldstein reminisces on his brief boxing career, the poem occasionally slips into cliché: Goldstein, who was small for a boxer, says in the poem that he was “All heart. That’s what most little guys are./But that counts for a lot.” But Calvocoressi balances this with graphic depictions of punching, failing to punch, and even choosing to walk away from a fight before you get punched.

Calvocoressi’s other boxing poems perform similar maneuvers, slipping between violence and sweetness. “Box Fugue,” about the Korean boxer Duk-Koo Kim, who died after a fight with Ray Mancini, has some startling images – rain in Vegas, a mother with a gun shoved into her mouth (“all our mothers/have to die one day”), but then ends with the predictable line “We are all so beautiful/ with our face against the mat.”

“Temple Beth Israel” perhaps best captures Calvocoressi’s ability to skillfully balance predictable images with unpredictable ones. In this final poem she describes what she sees while jogging through her Los Angeles neighborhood, such as a boy “resplendent in his yarmulke and Lakers/ jacket.”These observations lead to a series of images and ideas that range from church bombings to the landscape of Southern California to the act of reading and when she stops and asks herself, “Does it make this less of a poem?” the question feels earned. Calvocoressi contains her Big Ideas and balance of images in a variety of unusual forms. I was surprised to see litanies, epistles and even a pantoum, a somewhat archaic form that frequently repeats lines; something I hadn’t seen since I was assigned to write one in grad school.