In her latest book, New Life, Lambda Award–winning poet Ana Božičević writes, “For my birthday I want a cake/revealing the color of my soul.” Never saccharine, these poems are by turns cheeky and heartfelt, grounded and wistful, and above all—surprising. 

New Life is a book that is Dantesque in its ability to commune with the dead without becoming fixed in the past. Instead, the poems here have a distinct sense of nonlinear time, where each line feels like an ancient bone discovered, only to be reassembled into a chimera of another self. In this way, Božičević continually greets herself as a stranger, reminding us that in some respects every poem is a love poem.