Trudell is an independent scholar with a bachelor's degree in English literature. In the following essay, Trudell discusses Lazic's commentary on love, sex, and desire, arguing that the opening poem of A Wake for the Living establishes the paradoxical view of love that the poet will explore throughout the collection.

"Death Sentences," the first poem in A Wake for the Living, is an extremely effective opener. It draws in the reader with the exciting and joyous moment of the speaker finding the "eternity" of her lover's "arms around [her] neck." Since this moment is also a "death sentence," however, it establishes a complex paradox about sex, desire, death, and life that leads readers, intrigued, to follow these themes throughout Lazic's collection. The book is full of such paradoxes; it juxtaposes images of death and despair with those of life and joy until they become profoundly confused, and...