Elizabeth Cohen reviews Daniel Shapiro’s Child With A Swan’s Wings in the May/June 2020 issue of American Book Review.
Oh, to be the poet Daniel Shapiro! The whimsical narrative poems in Child with a Swan’s Wings, bring forth such things as mermen in showers, the deepest thoughts of an Incan rodent, the history of a brick, even the emotions of a shadow. To read through the five sections of this book (and a “coda”) is to time travel, bounce between seen and unseen worlds, and slip into other dimensions. Each poem opens a door to imagined realms of the vastest dimensions. Honestly, it is how I imagine it would be to go on an ayahuasca retreat, if such an experience could be distilled into poetry.
