If only a single syllable could be deployed to describe Tim Seibles' 2012 National Book Award-nominated poetry collection Fast Animals, "kinetic" would be it. Throughout the collection, the narrators are in movement, going from place to place, emotional state to emotional state, calm to fear, confusion to clarity. The poems feel as though they would be best read in a breathless rush, perhaps with the reader herself moving about while engaged with the poems.

Seibles charts a semi-biographical voyage in these poems, beginning with this bit from "Born":



In this and subsequent poems, the narrators express confusion about the world in which they move. Is it a place worthy of settling down in, or should it be upended, tossed about, made into something new? The poems of Fast Animals do not skimp on the confusions of youth, such as this bit from "Terry Moore":




Seibles' poetry is simultaneously male-universal (speaking to the fears of rejection by women and worries about our bodies) and yet race-specific, when he discusses the perils and curiosities involved with interracial love in "Allison Wolff":





"Allison Wolff" perhaps is the most emblematic poem in Fast Animals. Here the raw emotional state of youth is laid bare, yet coupled with "loud" images, that of the tapping of Allison's strapless heels, clacking as she moves; the "heaviness" of racism, appearing here in the guise of a humidity that pervades the soul and then wafts out into the streets to grab another. The fear and worry here is palpable, but it is mixed with youthful yearning and confusion: after all, what harm does a couple in love holding hands pose to any other than those who fear love itself?

Seibles, with the possible exception of Cynthia Huntington's Heavenly Bodies, is the most "personal" of the five National Book Award poetry finalists. There are moments of triumph intermixed with more subdued moments, if not quite defeat, then rather something akin to a sigh of resignation before the struggle is resumed once again in another poem. The poems build up one another, as themes introduced in one poem, perhaps with a question or metaphorical shrug of the shoulders, is explored further later on the collection. The result is a collection that is much stronger than the sum of its parts. Fast Animals, along with Susan Wheeler's Meme, might be one of the two strongest collections in this year's shortlist. Certainly it is a collection that will be worth re-reading multiple times in the years to come.