Stacy Szymaszek places her readers in a border situation. Here is a poetics of extreme condensation. "ink a hinge here/ ‘n here/ ‘n mother/ make me limber." Where traces are, lines remain. Magic is implicated in every shot and countershot. This is idiosyncratic and stunning work.

—Susan Howe

Each poem is what I am looking for: a resonance with a particular location, an intelligence unafraid of its humanity, a sort of desperate adequacy with the people or objects that Szymaszek encounters.

—Etel Adnan

'Emptied of All Ships' is a setting out into crucial waters. Each word here has its own weight and position—its own vital movement between poles of loss
and discovery. With our sight-lines thus widened, the observance itself becomes activated—another mode of transport. A poetry of brevity is a tough task
(especially the word-as-line), but in these pages it registers as achievement.

—George Albon