Saint X

Kirk Nesset’s Saint X chronicles the muted joy and despair of a millennial age, charting love’s ills and the grind of mortality. His figures are bizarre but people born under punches, shaken awake by rattles and flares, latter-day pilgrims who stare at the statue that stares at America; people for whom disobedience is still a first duty, and death but a question of style. Wearing bandages rather than smiles, they’re misshapen champions downed by self-bludgeons, perversely on foot while the saddled horse follows—and yet in each case, in each poem, they are honored if not saved by nuanced reflection, measured perception, and the pleasures of song.