rev. of The Saint of Burning Down by Nicole Cuddeback

The Saint of Burning Down, poems by Nicole Cuddeback (Zoo): With a penchant for the things of this world that reminds one of Bishop, Cuddeback’s first book catalogues landscapes diverse as the fecund silt of her childhood Florida to sunlit, crowd-filled piazzas of Florence, Italy. The book opens with the speaker as a muted and observant presence, but into its second half one notes the emergence of a voice bold enough to remark on a marital quarrel: "Last night I joked, called him Beauty; he broke my nose." The ever-shifting perspectives of the poems, along with Cuddeback’s employment of varying formal strategies, serve to make this book complicated, felt, and necessary. —Cate Marvin