“Revived Again, Again, Again”: On Lisa Russ Spaar’s “Madrigalia: New and Selected Poems”

“To write the life of him who excelled all mankind in writing the lives of others,” James Boswell said, referring to the great 18th-century person of letters, Samuel Johnson, “may be reckoned in me a presumptuous task.” Exactly thus do I approach, with humility not unmixed with awe, Lisa Russ Spaar’s Madrigalia: New and Selected Poems