Prince Rupert's Drop (The ^AOxford Poets)

Prince Rupert's drop, a rare curiosity of the glass-making process, is a tear of glass at once resilient and fragile which explodes dramatically when the glass shatters. This tension--between the beauty and sense of almost inevitable loss inherent in the things we admire most--is a key to many of the poems in Jane Draycott's first full-length solo collection. The long central poem, "Braving the Dark," written after her brother's death from AIDS at the age of 30, is particularly fraught with this tension. Dramatic, quietly surreal, the poems in Prince Rupert's Drop hide a sense of decay and transience beneath the energy of their detail.