Timeline

• Jul 05, 2025: started reading.
• Jul 06, 2025: finished reading.

Review

At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

One of the best contemporary poetry collections I’ve read recently. Except it feels like a category error to call this a “poetry collection.” It’s a complete story with characters and events. Almost like a novel in the form of a poetry collection.

It’s sharp and profound. At several points I realized I would read a page, stop and stare out my window, and then read the page again. Kaminsky wields language like a knife.

Perhaps worth noting that even though this is ostensibly about the erosion of society in Ukraine in the late 2010s, published just prior to the total war which broke out in the region in the 2020s, but it’s impossible to read it at the present moment and not feel the weight of its implications for the present moment in America.

I won’t recommend it to you, because it sits heavy, but I think you should read it.