Animal Magnetism by local DC poet Kim Roberts is a lovely book. It is full of curiosity, humor and grace. The winner of the 2009 Pearl Poetry Prize (selected by Debra Marquart), the book is divided into three sections of honesty and courage. In the first section, Roberts takes us on a journey to different museums across the country and around the world, where she studies different aspects of the human anatomy and its history in an attempt to make sense of her own phyicality, as she pulls her readers in from the first stanza of the first poem with her imagery.
The second section takes a step back from the human anatomy and puts a foot forward into the human condition. A reflective section, It starts with a wonderful prose poem about the men she and her friend's once knew. A series of poems start to make themselves known for the significance of an imaginary husband, and in these poems readers get the sense that what Roberts is committed to is something far more important than what these lovely poems only begin to reveal.
In the third section, she ties the two previous sections with a bit of what matters most in the presence of the miraculous, from the necessary role of a surgeon to good times with friends.
Roberts provides her readers with a desire to reflect on their own lives, and reflect on where it all counts the most. And that could be the biggest gift of all.
Animal Magnetism is published by Pearl Editions, and can be ordered from its Web site at www.pearlmag.com/pearled.html.
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