now—thrown into conflict with itself as it has been by the hallmarks of our cultural moment: irony ("irony beyond irony"), hyper-self-awareness, the constant interruptions of calamity far and near. In THE BODY, THE ROOMS, Frazee manages to turn self-consciousness into a virtue—into the lyric material itself. "Do we believe in anything" a poem asks—without a question mark. Even grief comes to us mediated, and so Frazee invents an elegy for the twenty-first century. Formally daring and beautifully written, this book braves its own questioning—and triumphs.

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