Bennett’s poems are spare, fragmented, and haunting. The book’s final entry, “The Lost Letters,” claim to be “letter fragments…found in the North Woods,” parts of which “are missing from snow thaw, severe temperature changes, and ice storms.” These look like this:
Maybe I am flying
needed
this letter
without
comfort. When I go inside the rooms my
mind
walls I do not recognize
These conjure up a similar eeriness as surveillance footage of missing persons, the kind in which the person’s actions are inexplicable, or speak to some unknown distress, like a face responding in fear to a figure off-screen. The exact meaning of these letters is left ambiguous, which only amplifies its uncanny quality. Lost Letters and Other Animals is an aching and searching collection.