What do you think?
Rate this book
Solving for X
poetry collection by current Poet Laureate of Missouri
100 pages, Paperback
Published April 11, 2022
1 person is currently reading
1 person want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 11, 2022
Wagner is now about halfway through her tenure as the Poet Laureate of Missouri, and Solving for X proves she isn’t slowing down despite the trials of quarantine and her ever growing To Do list. I own all her books, so I couldn’t wait to read it. I love the accessibility of her poems, their range, their humanity and wit, and her courage in talking of things that can be hard to talk about. Through a career as a high school English teacher, she’s been dedicated to making others fall in love with poetry, too.
My favorites are poems about her students, both tragic and hilarious, and those about her colorful Italian family. She also includes more nature poems in this collection because she’s been staying out of public like the rest of us and hiking through the woods. But she doesn’t stop there. All those years of hearing “What do I write?” from students filled her coffer with ideas. We get some relief from a few gut-wrenching poems by zeroing in on something small using brilliant metaphor and description: the beauty of a pomegranate, the super powers of yarrow, the heat of August. “Only the dog comes in / smelling of sunlight.”
Wagner even illustrated her own book with quirky collages. It’s a bit surprising that she doesn’t write more ekphrastic poetry, but she brings her own slant to what ekphrastic means when she describes her vision before and after in “Cataract Surgery.’’ (She uses “we” because she’s describing all the patients lined up on gurneys.)
“…Over in seven minutes, we awake, wobbly,
and step from the amber varnish of a dark
Rembrandt, into the new blue of a Hockney morning
where seeing is believing in all of its bright white.”
My favorites are poems about her students, both tragic and hilarious, and those about her colorful Italian family. She also includes more nature poems in this collection because she’s been staying out of public like the rest of us and hiking through the woods. But she doesn’t stop there. All those years of hearing “What do I write?” from students filled her coffer with ideas. We get some relief from a few gut-wrenching poems by zeroing in on something small using brilliant metaphor and description: the beauty of a pomegranate, the super powers of yarrow, the heat of August. “Only the dog comes in / smelling of sunlight.”
Wagner even illustrated her own book with quirky collages. It’s a bit surprising that she doesn’t write more ekphrastic poetry, but she brings her own slant to what ekphrastic means when she describes her vision before and after in “Cataract Surgery.’’ (She uses “we” because she’s describing all the patients lined up on gurneys.)
“…Over in seven minutes, we awake, wobbly,
and step from the amber varnish of a dark
Rembrandt, into the new blue of a Hockney morning
where seeing is believing in all of its bright white.”
August 3, 2022
One of Maryfrances' best collections, this book contains a variety of poems about nature and of course, many about the nature of teaching high school students.
As usual, her poetry reveals a keen sense of sound, rhythm, and imagery that captures the reader.
(I'll write more later, but I wanted to share how much I enjoyed this work.
Bravo! Maryfrances.
As usual, her poetry reveals a keen sense of sound, rhythm, and imagery that captures the reader.
(I'll write more later, but I wanted to share how much I enjoyed this work.
Bravo! Maryfrances.
June 5, 2024
Maryfrances Wagner’s poetry has always displayed an extremely precise attention to detail, and in Solving for X, Missouri’s sixth Poet Laureate takes this dedication to nuance to a new, unflinching degree. From childhood memories, to caring for aging parents, to the world-shared experience of COVID, Wagner delivers in a most profound way.
Though a significant part of Solving for X deals in the past, while some of the memories are joyous, they are never tainted with the syrupy trap of nostalgia, nor are the less desirable moments overworked to melodrama. At every instance, Maryfrances Wagner’s poems show a new way of looking at life, a new way of experiencing the world.
The poet has learned to pay careful attention to the world beneath the world in the many ways it manifests itself. The opening stanza of one of the final poems in the collection, For What We Don’t Know is a perfect example. Wagner tells us:
“…my dog reads/what’s underground, what lingers around trees./She lives by what she hears lurking in the spaces we don’t know.”
Wagner ends the poem with a dedication:
“for the dog tilting her ear, for the birds, for the moon/hiding its stars and the silvering snow.”
This is the sort of carful diligence in observation and in the craft of writing which is on abundant display in all of the pages in Solving for X.
This latest collection is extremely accessible, yet the lines are so densely layered in depth and detail, readers will find themselves returning to these poems for years.
-James Benger, author of From the Back
Though a significant part of Solving for X deals in the past, while some of the memories are joyous, they are never tainted with the syrupy trap of nostalgia, nor are the less desirable moments overworked to melodrama. At every instance, Maryfrances Wagner’s poems show a new way of looking at life, a new way of experiencing the world.
The poet has learned to pay careful attention to the world beneath the world in the many ways it manifests itself. The opening stanza of one of the final poems in the collection, For What We Don’t Know is a perfect example. Wagner tells us:
“…my dog reads/what’s underground, what lingers around trees./She lives by what she hears lurking in the spaces we don’t know.”
Wagner ends the poem with a dedication:
“for the dog tilting her ear, for the birds, for the moon/hiding its stars and the silvering snow.”
This is the sort of carful diligence in observation and in the craft of writing which is on abundant display in all of the pages in Solving for X.
This latest collection is extremely accessible, yet the lines are so densely layered in depth and detail, readers will find themselves returning to these poems for years.
-James Benger, author of From the Back
August 25, 2023
After reading Solving for X, by Maryfrance Wagner, it is not hard to believe she was selected Poet Laureate of Missouri. The book brims with beautiful passages that celebrate the landscape such as in her poem “Missouri,” “Pawpaws and persimmons slip from their trees in thuds until katydids cease their churning.” Wagner’s collection makes readers reflect deeply at times and smile with recognition at other moments. Early in the collection the poems cut readers to the quick with heartbreaking moments teachers witness. For example, students share their secrets, a new teacher inadvertently facilitates a student’s beating, students reflect on their time in prison. My favorite parts of this collection are the poems about people who have loved each other a long time. “Saturdays at the Bakery” for instance highlights a couple who drink coffee and eat oatmeal cookies. For them, “the cookie, the bagel, the coffee, the window were enough.” Poetry lovers who pick up this collection will feel as the speaker in “Lost in the Snow” feels, and “we will be somewhere we want to go as the snow keeps falling and falling.”
November 22, 2022
I have just finished SOLVING FOR X, after two days of joyful reading, and am grateful for this beautiful book. I love the concluding poem--perfect conclusion. And so many images throughout will never leave me (the racoon on the path, truly a "haunting" image even in its absence; the "flash" of the Little Blue Trace that "eel[s] around its curves," and the poem's knock-out concluding couplet; the last two couplets of "August!--as well as poem after poem. Also to admire about the collection, beginning with Mark still in the doorway, jacket thrown across his shoulder, "leaning against the jamb," and full blown in "House Dreaming" are the tender, sometimes bittersweet evocations of afterimages, the reminder that we always have those. Brava! Trish Reeves
May 3, 2023
Solving for X showcases Missouri Poet Laureate Maryfrances Wagner's finest writing. Wagner's unpretentious and technically flawless narrative style has earned her a faithful national following. Her latest book develops a strong lyric element as she carefully navigates the minefields of poverty, crime, and race that she encountered as a classroom teacher. Wagner is a delightful writer, refreshingly direct but never pushy, always sensitive but tough where it counts.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews