Makeshift Cathedral

An heir to both James Wright and Frank Bidart, Peter LaBerge writes seductive, austere psychologies, a “cathedral / of fields, cul-de-sacs, northwestern Ohio” in the background—and in the fore, “queerness unsolved.” I admire the discomfort of Makeshift Cathedral, the conflation of faith and the fragile body, of youth and sexual agency: “Pleasure—I never wanted this,” he admits in “Obey.” LaBerge shines a necessary light on cruelty and injustice, and yet. And yet, like hope, “the sky blooms in spite // of its return to night." This is a disturbing, deeply humane book.
—Randall Mann