Sweet Repetition - (Phoenix Poets) by Cynthia Cruz (Paperback)

About the Book

"Cynthia Cruz's latest collection, Sweet Repetition, deftly embraces cyclicality and the accumulation of meaning over time. Words, phrases, and titles echo throughout this book-length sequence of poems, forming new constellations with each passing encounter. This lyrical conceit is not merely repetition for repetition's sake, though, but is instead political. The structure of repetition is inherently revolutionary: Repetition revisits and revises, altering the course of history by nature of its movement. By centering repetition as a structural device, Cruz invites the specter of Sigmund Freud to hover over the book-namely, his 1914 paper "Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through." In Freudian analysis, the things we repress-what we know but don't want to know-reappear in the actions we repeat. This form of unknowing, of remaining unaware of what our unconscious knows, is to Cruz a form of knowing in and of itself. The minimalist lyricism of Sweet Repetition invites its readers to experience such knowing in real time and to recognize pulsing, unforeseen beauty in the recurrence of images, archetypes, and obsessions"--

Book Synopsis

Poetry that centers its movement on repetition--orbiting, unwinding, and returning.

Integrating Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and the works of other poets, this collection explores narrative through abstraction and considers how repetition holds both the power to constrain and to generate. Freud explains how what we repress--what we know but don't want to acknowledge--reappears in our actions through repetition. Through slips of the tongue or selective memory, we engage with what our unconscious knows, finding knowledge through unknowing. The psychoanalytic session is centered on bringing forth repressed knowledge through acts of unknowing--speaking without thinking--which brings one closer to recognizing an obscured desire.

The poetry of Sweet Repetition works in ways akin to the psychoanalytic act. These pulsing poems follow the definitions of the word revolution--to revolve, change direction, unroll, unwind, happen again, repeat, orbit around. Images and words reappear in the motion of Cynthia Cruz's poems, inviting us into their revolutionary, political, and cumulative effects.

Review Quotes

"It's clear that Cruz's Sweet Repetition is determined to come at the world from a canted angle, a perspective that is by turns surreal, droll and slightly terrifying. . . . As Sweet Repetition suggests, it's not just poem titles that repeat throughout the book, but also images, ideas and emotional states, all of which grow richer upon rereading."-- "California Review of Books, on "The Best Poetry Books of 2025""

"If you've been reading Cruz's work, it will come as no surprise that Freud is at the center of her ninth collection of poems, yet here her palette is more dreamlike than cinematic, as she turns to the repetitions of the psyche, to the outward poetic repetition . . . Cruz continues to be a poet who understands the lyric's profound bridging of the psychological with collective resonances, and this surfaces as she drives us towards this collection's Brecht-inspired conclusion with the poem 'All of Us or None of Us.' She ends with his words--'all of us or none'--but begins this final poem in medias res: 'And we made a tunnel / Through the darkening Tunnel. You, me, / And all the others' pushing us through 'blackening / Gelatinous junk' as we are 'Swimming / In the warning / Of what was once America.'"-- "Literary Hub"

"Sweet Repetition is exceptionally intelligent, profoundly felt, and intricately composed around reenactment and revision, transport and transformation, memory and wonder, and mystery. At its core is a vital and luminous language of justice, and Cruz works every poem to a sweet perfection. A great book by a great poetic talent."--Lawrence Joseph, author of "A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems"

"Cruz is a rising voice in contemporary poetry who is already achieving recognition for her intimate, philosophical, and quietly radical art. Drawing on the deep historical tradition of lyric poetry from Sappho to John Wieners, Cruz's work feels both timeless and timely, addressed both to eternity and to our most urgent political realities today. The repetition of images, archetypes, and obsessions throughout Sweet Repetition lends a metaphysical aspect to this poet's urgent address to our continuous present. Every time I revisit this volume, I discover new dimensions in its finely cut prismatic surfaces."--Srikanth Reddy, Phoenix Poets series editor and author of "Underworld Lit"

"The spare and elegant language of Cruz disarms us as we embark on a journey through the ways in which thought and memory keep us awake at night, refusing to release us from obsession, taunting and haunting us, and nudging us closer to meaning--or madness. Sweet Repetition offers no polite resolution. Instead, it unleashes a cacophony of disquieting ideas and startling images, each 'Looping back endlessly / To its ruinous and glorious / Origin.'"--Rigoberto González, author of "Unpeopled Eden"

"Expertly employing her distinct, unsentimental voice, Cruz's poems dwell in the bittersweet and often heartbreaking liminality of dreaming and memory, where 'the movement / Of always leaving and returning' is most acutely felt. I can't imagine a reader who will not recognize the sensation of encountering in their own lucid but elusive dreamscape or remembrance a childhood or place of origin, 'a lifetime of cities away, ' 'warped but beautiful.' Sweet Repetition is a prime example of the possibilities of lyric poetry." --Rosa Alcalá, author of "YOU"

About the Author

Cynthia Cruz is the author of eight books of poetry, two works of nonfiction, and one novel. Her collection Hotel Oblivion was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow for Poetry. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the European Graduate School.