Cry Baby Mystic

In Daniel Tiffany's Cry Baby Mystic, somatic questions join hands in a waltz of ragged secrets and placards of reborn language, hidden police, and scratchy names. Trembling voices crawl out from the page and then right into us - or do they climb out of us and into the scene? - growing horse veins on their necks and Googling the scene (as they speak).

Daniel Tiffany is a true virtuoso. His taut syllabics incorporate a range of idioms, at once demotic and high-flown; the sprung line breaks - the interruptions and stutterings - sharpen consciousness. The poem's cry-baby-mystic voice does no one's bidding and thereby thrills the muses. In tone and method and subject, Tiffany courts the deep end; the poem opens up a sinkhole on every page, and out of this well, a Hölderlin-esque outpouring of divine moodiness makes itself heard.

The speculative drive of Daniel Tiffany's inventive book-length poem offers a flurry of suspicions, forays, wisdoms. Micro-conversations spin up into our field of listening, then just as quickly fade away. Though the approach is playful, the beauty in this book is serious and emerges in a seriously beautiful way. Down-pressers and Mobb Deep make an appearance! And there is pain, a calling out in exasperation, celebration, visionary joy.

Margery Kempe won't stop crying and no one can do anything about it. Hyper-formal and bent out of shape, Cry Baby Mystic turns into the song of a "mud oboe" that leaves us hushed, "hunched," in the dark.

Daniel Tiffany is the author of six full-length collections of poetry and five volumes of literary criticism, along with translations of Greek, French, and Italian writers. He is a recipient of the Berlin Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Berlin.