“Dissonant harmonics”

Degna Stone’s new poetry collection Handling Stolen Goods takes us through abandoned structures both literal and figurative. Starting with hazy scenes of hash-inspired states of disconnect, the collection becomes a query into the societal mechanisms that might inspire this disconnect. Indeed, Stones’ own poetic structures which are mostly unrhyming stanzas, are as though to continually remind us of the forms and figures she seems adept at exploring.  In ‘Vördur,’ (from the Old Norse to mean ‘guard’)  for example, we’re introduced to a wind that ‘makes instruments of half-built tower blocks’ and  causes ‘dissonant harmonics’ to ‘carve a path through my brain.’