Last swelling of the uterus, last circuit of a childhood home, last flare of recognition on a father’s face: “It is most certainly the end of something,” writes the poet in these pages. And upon that unblinking apprehension builds an edifice of praise. We love the world because we are doomed to lose it, and nowhere is that love more eloquently manifest than in poems like those of  Vortex Street.

—Linda Gregerson

Confirming the truth that grief is the growing-pot of beauty, Vortex Street mourns the passage of time in the forms of loss of youth and youthful dreams, dying parents, omnipresent knowledge of the world’s violence, the past enshrined in a house for sale. Page Hill Starzinger, acute and excitingly associative, articulates these complex sorrows with unflinching originality. These poems remind the reader what it feels like to live in the moment as moments inexorably move on; they will stay with you.

—Kathleen Ossip

poems from Vortex Street 

Listen to poems from Vortex Street on KGB Monday Night Poetry, September 2
American Poetry Review: “My Unborn Child Says to Me” “Galaxy Filament” 
At Length: “About a House” published as “Gest”
Kenyon Review: “Specula” “Dive-bomb”
Laurel Review: “Else” “OO” 
Literary Imagination: “Complicit” 
On The Seawall: “And: Still” 
Plume: “Black Apples” “Landing” “Sidewinder” “Vortex Street” 
The Cortland Review: “I Am” “XX” “Vocal Balance”