So Tough cuts a loose and spaced-out path through the interpenetrated dreams of public, doomsday time and private, organic time. Written in a season of wildfire smoke punctuated by gunfire, grieving, and a child' s questioning spirit, the book moves to the countervailing rhythms of household, eros, pleasure and charm, casting a wayward grin at the catastrophic comedy of our days. Though he' s not really that tough, Jared Stanley rides elemental tones through " the desert roses, semi-wilted, wonderful, yellowed, well, you know / suffering to cover the suffering."
"This eight-line poem song-cycle casts a distinct spell from its very first passages; a reverent "drift and crest" sustained throughout the duration. Wagered in the work are the possibilities of personhood-now impromptu, prismatic, alive to the world; now bemused, mournful, ever committed to dwelling in and giving rise to the sudden particulars of the present. In its unfolding is held, with humor and despair, the rift that separates "the timbres, the changes," the staggering weirdness of end-stage modernity, and the looming catastrophe of planetary crisis, wherein "all creation fades to voice"-or into "little half-moons of smokelight / in the typewriter keys." Remarkable."
