Sometimes Full of Daylight - Lewis Owen

Sometimes Full of Daylight, the debut full-length collection of poetry by Owen Lewis, asks us to embark on a

journey through a life-we begin with the walls wanting to fall in, hit by "all the storms at once," and from there we

find ourselves everywhere from the schoolyard where "the boy is tinder," to family births and deaths, divorce, and

the love that comes after. Lewis' deftness in juxtaposition continuously brings the quotidian image to life, whether as

a glimmer of hope, or a swift devastation: "How the family felt / your leaving? We waited. // A bank of votive

candles twisting in light."

In "Bellagio," the long poem at the center of the book, the speaker confronts a statue of Dante, asking, "Are you

lonely / in your myths of love?" Aimed at both the past and the future, this question echoes throughout the

collection. Here, "air and water and stone / become ideas" and the words for love are "syllables belonging to no

language." Many of the poems are rooted in nature, both in its serenity and its storms. We come across "the last

azalea" and a sea of "slow mourning anemones," but in the turmoil of the human experience, "the ex-boyfriend

beating her / into a swollen bruised sponge," the speaker seeks refuge in the natural world, "the lake fog in the late

morning clearing." Again and again, Lewis reminds us that we can be "sometimes full of daylight," even as "we are

starved / for things of the earth that go beyond the earth."