As If This Did Not Happen Every Day

As If This Did Not Happen Every Day moves forward from the mostly-bird-oriented poems Paula J. Lambert has been working on for years, focusing now on fish, whales, turtles, snakes, and so on. Birds are included, but the poet has turned to a wider array of species to tell a story largely of the feminine. Often victimized, in all kinds of ways-overwhelmed, hunted, and displaced-salvation, if it is to be had, is not in mimicking the patriarchal, searching for some kind of dominance. Grace lies within the larger, divine concept of a collective feminine. "I know you know what it feels like," the speaker of one poem tells the reader. We live in a world overgrown, overpopulated, diseased, surreal, wild. Fish fall from the sky, birds crash into skyscrapers, and invasive species-in their own attempt to survive-take over every space they find themselves in. Even in our best attempts to help, things fall apart: "We who've lived long enough...multiply every problem we've inherited." What's left, asks the author, but to watch it