Death Fluorescence

Death Fluorescence is a triumphant and visually stunning collection. Poet Julia Bouwsma expertly crafts an exploration of life on this Earth woven with the wonders of parasitic worms, Jewish identity, the persistent neurosis of mice. Grounded in visualizations of nature bordering on the spiritual, with moons that hemorrhage, ghost apples, and a quarry’s snow-mounded shoulder, one can dig their fingers into the soil of this collection and watch the speaker grow throughout. Each page is ＂an entire universe of starry luminescent decay＂-from the contrapuntal to the Markov Sonnet, these poems are anything but typical. The poet’s poignant language demands to be heard and asks the reader to ＂bite down among stippled wormholes and taste our blinding sweetness.＂ Bouwsma herself puts it best: this collection ＂will lift into the sky like a cathedral toward heaven＂-it is transcendent, it is revolutionizing, it is fluorescent.