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Blair, 2025.
“Steven Leyva’s newest book, The Opposite of Cruelty, is full of lyrics that pack more music and thinking into one line than many poets pack into a whole poem. Here are expansive, tensile sonnets that explore the fragility and intensity of joy, that sing the praises of both ancient myth and popular culture, that meld the devotional to the political. Here are odes and aubades, here are poems that playfully reinvent poetic form in order to question the constructions (and restrictions) we’ve used to socially imagine race. This is a generous, beautiful collection that speaks directly about how and what we choose to love in this dazzling, changeable, sometimes frightening world.” — Paisley Rekdal, West: A Translation
Blair, 2025.
“Steven Leyva’s newest book, The Opposite of Cruelty, is full of lyrics that pack more music and thinking into one line than many poets pack into a whole poem. Here are expansive, tensile sonnets that explore the fragility and intensity of joy, that sing the praises of both ancient myth and popular culture, that meld the devotional to the political. Here are odes and aubades, here are poems that playfully reinvent poetic form in order to question the constructions (and restrictions) we’ve used to socially imagine race. This is a generous, beautiful collection that speaks directly about how and what we choose to love in this dazzling, changeable, sometimes frightening world.” — Paisley Rekdal, West: A Translation
