Picture Perfect

Calling it "an incredible feat of vision and voice," Michael Lista is impressed by Alexandra Oliver's debut, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway.

Oliver, who also holds a degree in film studies, writes poems that have dual purchase on the senses; she is equally gifted at picture-perfect scene making and image construction as she is at stitching those scenes together in an unforgettable aural fabric.

And more:

Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats.

Sample poem here.