An accessible and illuminating debut collection that explores the arranged marriage of the bestial and humane

Logic is strained, existence contracts and multiplies, connections amputate then graft in incongruous ways in Jamie Sharpe’s poems, which, like a funhouse mirror, reflect our own absurd image.

Nancy Reagan promotes crab salad (which is to say, her husband); the city of Paris spills into the countryside; a hammer seeks understanding through a vase. An assemblage of often disparate elements, Animal Husbandry Today attempts the ultimate reconciliation: that of the mind with the world.

A plane crashes on the border of two countries.

Can you wear white to the funeral

If you’re a virgin before mayday?

— from “Two Trains”