Poetry. A vivarium is an enclosure for living things—plants or
animals—which might likewise be said of a poem. With a vivacious
sensibility and unruly leaps from elegiac to ironic, Sajé's new book is an
abecedarium, fully using the page, and challenging all manner of received
wisdom. Employing lyrics, lists, arguments, narratives, and meditations,
and including prose poems devoted to particular letters as well as invented
visual or conceptual pieces, in VIVARIUM the alphabet is endowed with power
far beyond usefulness. Form breathes life in this book, and the lived
emotion of these poems defies death.