Same Faces by Albert Mobilio

The Geographics teems with heady, inexhaustible embarkation. A piece of the self is buried inside each departure and, we learn, “the ground itself is launched.” That the skies are “geologic” might thus come as no surprise, but what’s around the next clausal bend or stipulatory turn almost always does. This extraordinary book is wise beyond comment or commendation, so true to its way it adduces its own lucid blurb, albeit unintended: “These documents require better lips than ours.” 

Intelligence is the first gift here—active, troublemaking, rapture-prone intelligence. The intelligence that animates Mobilio’s celebrated essays and reviews is brightly present in these poems, glittering with quick dance steps, delirious with almost unkept promises. Every page is full of surprises, and I cannot think of another poet who so consistently astonishes me with deft moves.  

The heir to Modernism at its most terse and most oblique, Mobilio works line and sound forcefully together, managing amazingly acrobatic moves. With an eye for the monumental incidental, he winds through ekphrastic gesture and eccentric abecedarium to give us a tour of the contemporary that’s quick, vivid, and wry almost to the point of irony—but not quite. Instead, he sticks with the tenacious questions, probing the slim abysses between a life’s well-oiled parts. It’s delightful, witty, and deeply moving all at once.