Pressestimmen
Something of the energy, the savagery and emotional fierceness of Robert Lowell’s early poems is to be found in this impressive book by Joshua Mehigan. These poems are often wound tight as springs, and are concentrations of violent feelings and visions of cruelty, yet uttered in a language quietly brilliant, as well as undeniably powerful. (Anthony Hecht)
Joshua Mehigan is a poet of glowing gifts—his exquisite control of meter and rhyme and his never-failing diction, pointed and resonant both, are startlingly good, as is his sense of pace and timing in poem after poem. But his talents are not merely displayed in these profoundly affecting poems, but rather gloriously employed in their conception and framing. From the freshness and grace of the opening ‘Promenade,’ through the darker sonnets—including the fine title poem—this book is a remarkable achievement. (John Hollander)
There is more insight into domestic grief in these and other poems in The Optimist than in a dozen louder, more overtly confessional books. And that sense of insight born from experience is what makes Mehigan’s work so moving and impressive. Few American poets, old or young, seem to know so much. (Adam Kirsch)
Terse, tightly wound, as swift and barbed as arrows, this collection of fifty poems hits cleanly and hard. (Peter Skinner)



