Ricochet: poems

Inessa Baram-Blackwell
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:45:20 PDT

Before words take on meaning for us, whether we encounter them as youngsters or adults, they are collections of sounds and shapes, more or less mellifluous depending on our personal aesthetics, and what we mean them to describe merely nameless objects, ideas, or actions. The intersection of words and what, or how, they describe is sizable, although in everyday exchanges we tend towards the objects of description rather than the descriptions themselves. The poems comprising Ricochet, and perhaps much of poetry in general, attempt to serve as a corrective to this predisposition. Veering in multifarious directions, the poems in turn encounter nature, science, politics, religion, language, and life cycles. The pith of the collection is the quirky third section, which explores movement as much as it does the stated subjects of the poems. The compilation plays with language, presenting ideas that ricochet, but not necessarily back to their Origins.