February 11, 2026

Reports LARB:

"Devon Walker-Figueroa first offered me a peek into an early draft of Lazarus Species (2025) in fall 2022. I was so overtaken by the book that I not only dreamed of it but also lived in my dreams of it. The playful linguistic verve and swerving cerebral challenges are of a caliber few poets dare to attempt, and fewer can pull off without sacrificing the soul. In Lazarus Species, the soul and brain are beakers that fill each other back and forth until it’s impossible to see either one as ever empty. Logic is what time does to language, in arcs and leaps. Like the speaker, the reader of this collection is less concerned with 'being present' than with dancing between the before and after. Walker-Figueroa’s lines cascade, manipulating the page just enough to settle us in a certain attitude before unsettling us with a new mode or form. Complex forms are erased into free verse. Sonics seesaw semantics. Alchemy becomes an expectation. Metaphors transcend their sense, twisting the scientific into the spiritual."