One of my generation's finest poets--a truly peerless voice that realizes itself at such a startlingly scintillating pace. I'm so grateful to be alive alongside Maya's poems, and even more so knowing she's just getting started. An immense book and a searing achievement.--Ocean Vuong, author of The Emperor of Gladness

Maya C. Popa is an exquisite master at turning her experiences of the world into light, which she then shines into our hearts. Reading her poems is such an intimate engagement, like finding a room in your own house that you didn't even know was there. This book opens the door.--Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times best-selling author of All the Way to the River and Eat, Pray, Love

How is it possible to find such humor and pleasure in a book that also won't stop breaking my heart? A gem. This book is a gem. Sourced from the deepest places, then forged and honed, polished and gleaming. I've learned something about poetry and myself by reading this book.--Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of The New Economy

I began reading If You Love That Lady and a curious gossamer began to weave around me, within which I felt very calm and precise and moved. Something remarkable is at work here: an exact and exacting scintillation of thought and image that in sum becomes a shimmer. Reading it, one sees with a compound eye, as if looking upon human love as a dragonfly might, through countless tiny hexagons . . . all of it unsentimentally, brilliantly documenting 'what remains / of this extravagant, fatal, blinking life.'--Robert Macfarlane, author of Is a River Alive?

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2026-07-14

Length: 96 pages