Andrea L. Hackbarth, waveforms: a short course in piano tuning (Small Harbor Publishing, 2025) 37 pages, poetry. More info here.
This is hands down one of the best poetry collections I have read so far this year. Andrea L. Hackbarth tunes pianos as her day job and writes poetry as her passion. Here, they marry and have a child. This collection feels quite metapoetic in nature, using music as a metaphor for poetry. But is music a metaphor for poetry, or are music and poetry the exact same thing, using different instruments, Hackbarth's piano standing in for language? The boundaries blur, beautifully and divinely.
Favourite lines:
"They say it's possible to make of yourself a single song if you balance the force among your loves"
"Simply learn to use your tools as you press your ears into service."
"The possibility in a closed bud. The slow-moving glory-be of its opening"
"Spend hours in service of each singular note, then see if they hold."
"My mind has settled in the still of December, while my fingers tingle with recollections of summer wind."
"Generations of mothers and daughters echoing & echoing. Can you hear the long -forgotten matriarch?"
"Your task: to find where the whispers align among the notes"
"Listen: you may hear god's voice in the convergence"
"Who doesn't love an origin story? We repeat & repeat the one repeated to us and build our meager lives around it."
