On Purpose by Nick Laird

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A review by Salvatore Ruggiero

Nick Laird is the patron poet of bachelorism. This at first may seem counterintuitive, as he is the husband of bestselling literary novelist Zadie Smith. But upon reading either of his collections, one quickly gets a sense of man's inherent desire to be on his own. "Go home. I haven't slept alone / in weeks and need to reach across / the sheets to find not warmth but loss," Laird writes in "Aubade," a poem from his 2006 début, To a Fault. The title of that book would thus suggest that we do things, especially in relationships, that reveal our flaws, that make us contemptible to significant others. Even at his most tender, Laird is doubtful and cynical: "do you think we could find a way back to an evening / when holding each other will not be about balance / and all of the tunes are inside us and wordless?"

On Purpose is no different; if anything it's a maturing of the artist as a young man with unmitigated passion. Like an Elizabethan drama, the collection is loosely split into...

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