Drop and Dazzle

Los Angeles poet Peggy Dobreer’s second full-length collection of poetry, Drop and Dazzle, has been described as a tennis match played with snow globes or a game of poker dealt with tarot cards. There are only winners, and with every win comes a loss. It’s all in how you spin the tail on the last man skirting the shore, or the first woman to float face up. The book convenes a conspiracy of hearts; a colony of voices that cannot seem to make up their minds. Swayed by superstition, the vicissitudes of longing, and the need to find a way home, these characters call out and question love with all its obvious juxtapositions: history, family, politics, gender, superstition, promise, and loss. They are relentless in their desire to find meaning, and connection on their various escapades. What else could love be, but the something that can, or not, exist in all things and every place at once? Dobreer’s language is precise and inventive. She knits syntax like others knit rainbow booties for babies on miniature needles. Following threads of assonance and alliteration, rhythms and story, she varies poetic styles throughout the book and creates a lyrical world that is part jazz, part classics, part pedestrian interference, and all parts love.