The poems in Morgan Lucas Schuldt’s debut collection, Verge, speak at once both brokenly and reparably of the body, of its lusts and devotions, its violences and “satisflictions.” Schuldt’s lyrics exploit the phonetic suppleness of the English language in a way that teases out (mischievously so, earnestly so) an ecstatic, carnal, tender kind of poetics that pays homage–in both name and spirit–to poets like Hopkins, Celan, Crane and Berryman, as well as ekphrastically to painters Francis Bacon, Joan Miro, and Hironymous Bosch.
