The Inclination to Make Waves

"Hilary Sideris's new book, The Inclination to Make Waves, is full of linguistic tricks, lively metaphysics, and shades of amorous play that range from joyous, to coy, to melancholy. In these poems - all of them tight couplets of five or six stanzas - she's alert to the nuances of sound and sense, tweaking idioms, teasing out strands of etymology, making the full range of language operative in the moment of the poem. Inspired by each poem's title-word, she seizes on its linguistic possibilities, to build from a word the world." - Neil Shepard