Poppick’s second collection represents a slice of his generation at “the beginning of the end of our youth”: well read to a fault, bound for Brooklyn after higher education, unable to “enter economic adulthood.” Arranged in long-lined verse and in the multi-page prose-plus-haiku format called haibun, the poems’ attractive ruminations land Poppick close to John Ashbery, and even closer to near-contemporaries like Nick Twemlow and Dana Ward, who similarly mention friends and coevals by name (Zach, Chris, Andrés): “By alchemic code or grace or another’s ear we make our way, flush with the end of things.” New York won’t make it easy: “The city creates problems that it then solves luxuriously, if you can afford the rent.” Yet Poppick is having fun, and his readers might join him: “Creaturely notes wriggle up my brainstem, and make me laugh. / But I can math.” Though he may be (as he says) “trying to speak/ Directly,” to remain “hurtful and contemporary,” Poppick does best when he lets himself delight in verbal unpredictability, when figures of speech jump out, or sparkle and shine: “Language chooses what to say with you, / It says the waves, reiterated crimes.” “Words go dark because they’re comorbid with rain.”