Matthew Hall's striking poem revives what was, at least until the birth of prose fiction, the raison d'être of poetry: profound, unsettling mystery. This is a poem that does not only inventively weave in motifs of beekeeping, Amerindian history, and ecology to produce a rich, multidimensional textual tapestry; it produces this powerful fusion of concepts and signifiers to trace and approach a radical, and very new, truth.

From the invocation of seasons in the Cree language of the Native Americans of Canada's Saskatchewan prairie province, to a deep engagement with the lexicon of botany, Royal Jelly seduces the reader with the mystery of a genuinely new understanding of the world. It is also, oddly for such a properly and unashamedly erudite post-avant poem, highly readable and musical.

An important new work.

- Ali Alizadeh