The Changing

In poems that center on experiences of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, The Changing explores the formation of identity and the malleability of the self. Sabrina Black writes into the spaces between people—at times finding connection there and at times isolation. Throughout the collection, the speaker reflects on complicated relationships with family members, classmates, and friends; on the ways those relationships have shaped her; and, most of all, on her relationship with that elusive thing called the self. In a series of “Dear Advice Columnist” poems scattered throughout the manuscript, Black shifts focus away from personal experience, adopting the persona of an anonymous advice-seeker whose troubles and uncertainties further the collection’s examination of the unspoken rules of social behavior. Black’s poems employ lenses ranging from gender to topology to consider the complex factors that shape identity. Her writing is often colloquial, at times wry, at times earnest, propelled by repetition. Forms such as the sestina and duplex find their homes alongside free verse couplets in poems that travel from middle-school hallways to German trains. Through its many angles, The Changing brings readers to consider what it means to live among and with others, to be a self among selves, to know and be known