Poet Shanna Compton is the queen of quirk— and yet within her bright slashes of language lies real pathos, real insight. David Lehman has said of Compton’s debut collection, Down Spooky, that it “radiates an exuberant joy in the life of words.” I can think of no better description myself. Compton recaptures the vibrancy of sound and wordplay that is too often forgotten by modern poets—a delight in sound and lyric playfulness that is rarely seen now outside the realm of hip-hop and spoken word. Compton possesses the ability to transmute this sense of sound, along with its inherent meanings, into written forms that would please both Christian Wiman and Andre 3000. As the winner of the Winnow Press Open Book Award in Poetry, Down Spooky provides an exciting introduction to a talented poet.

Every poet works with words, but Compton is truly a word poet—one who doesn’t fight with language, but coaxes from it all its magic. She milks from every word choice not merely a literal or even connotative meaning, but also a complementary and intuitive sense of sound. Take for instance the poem “Good-Cooking Kitchen”:

Oh double shovel of
love your laugh splashy
desirable and that hookymaking
convincibility of mine—
we’re the perfect pair.
Though comfort offers us
jeweled cylinders of juice
the calendar notes no
change for our domestic
mutterings darling. Let’s be
content to be contrary,
take ourselves with pepper
in smallish bites, cautious
teeth. Oh the weekly
box! Here abounds missed
astringent, your little caper
ears studded with salt.
Come on the brine
is fine so pass
the wine and honey
shine insouciant do.

Like many of Compton’s poems, here’s one that’s so sure-footed in its gauging of natural pauses that the author is able to gleefully disregard most punctuation—and get away with it. Her aural force is then backed by a gift at picking the precise image: “jeweled cylinders of juice” or “ears studded with salt.” And then there are the novel sound-sense images Compton invents, phrases like “take ourselves with pepper/ in smallish bits” or “your laugh splashy.” These are things we’ve never heard before, and yet immediately upon hearing them, we know exactly what she means in this connubial kitchen scene.

Compton’s work is not limited by its own quirkiness, it is infused by it. Proof of her lack of gimmickry is the way that she also writes with poise and understatement on topics like the death of a grandmother; topics that might collapse under their own sodden weight in the hands of a less talented writer. One of the strongest and most subtle poems in this entire book is “I Declare a Rose”:

Mamaw’s answer to everything was
dope and salve, such remnants of the thicket
as primeval alligators and orchids.
So what’s moss for which masses?
For whose holly with ducklings?
A gar jaw? A trailer hitch?
That damn boat ramp.
Mamaw caught the dishwater
to rinse the okra patch. Her knotty
cypress knees kneading troweled
soil. Her handkerchief so Boraxed,
so lavendered. Her hymn ever-
so baptized, so spring-fed.
Sleep Mamaw. We’re singing now.
Your bread bags are folded
in every kitchen drawer.

Never has the mention of a little frugal tic rang so poignant or stood in for so much more as in these last two lines. This poem epitomizes the way in which Compton’s writing is wonderful. She draws from the small—cypress knees here, okra patch there, the delightful-sounding “gar jaw” there—to weave a precise, textured masterpiece. Many of my favorite poems indeed happen to be the shortest. Down Spooky also includes several narrative poems, but I like these less. Compton’s talent is showcased so much more brilliantly, it seems, in the imagistic, sound-gistic lyric burst.

Compton’s writing is fresh, quirky, and bold. Her poems strike one as those of a poet willing to take risks: she seeks the odd topic, approaches the more traditional topic from a novel angle, invents phrases, engages in relentless verbal play. And she’s clever—take her poems “Miss Epistolary” or “Those Days of Pomp & Vigor.” If the recent humor issue of Poetry and the overwhelmingly positive response it received are any indication, readers are desperate for more poets who are unafraid to write with a well-calibrated sense of both the tender and the comedic. Compton is clearly such a poet, and if Down Spooky is any indicator, she has great work in store.