I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First

Download or read book I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First written by Angie Mazakis and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Like nesting dolls, the poems in I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First contain scenes within scenes, inviting the reader over and over again to sharpen focus on minute details that, though small, reveal much about human perception and imagination. Angie Mazakis handles these layers of revelation with great tenderness. Her poems wander in the way that a curious mind wanders, so that even though they often end very far from where they started, they are anchored in the familiar, referring to experiences we all share: a moment of distraction in a coffee shop imagining a conversation with someone across the room, or a narrative built around the expressions of the cartoon people on the airplane seatback safety guide. I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First is a testament to the notion that whether through a cosmic or microscopic lens, “You just see one moment; you just see now.”