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New Books In Poetry

KEN POBO When the Light Turns Green – SPRUCE ALLEY PRESS 2014

A garden is not always a garden: our metaphors speak of our experiences and musings. Pobo shows the reader how seasons can mean change of weather, passage of time, and realizations of mortality

LISA GLUSKIN STONESTREET The Greenhouse BULL CITY PRESS 2014

In a collection that subverts sentiment even as it delves into the rich inner life of human sentimentality, Stonestreet stretches language and the reader’s expectations across the page. White space is a mind at work, parenthesis are interrogations, and prosody is the song of new life. This chapbook is must-read for anyone marching toward an

MEGAN MORIARTY From the Dictionary of Living Things FINISHING LINE PRESS 2014

Part dictionary, part guide to living, and part historical record of content, From the Dictionary of Living Things turns its own pages. It is a beautifully crafted and thought-provoking first collection from a poet at the beginnings of her career.

CEDAR SIGO Language Arts WAVE BOOKS 2014

Language Arts (Wave Books 2014) by Cedar Sigo is a departure and then reintroduction to form on avant garde’s terms. In addition to disparate explosions of imagery, Cedar trains the ear for surprise of sound and a prosody that was born of childhood prayer, exposure to native tongue, and an understanding of musical composition. You

KEVIN PRUFER Churches FOUR WAY BOOKS 2014

Kevin Prufer is a rare poet who manages to layer narratives and weave metrical variations seamlessly into his work, all while placing it on the page in an organic and “effortless” way. This is especially notable when we come to understand the process by which his poems are born; the disparate connections and glorious jumps,

VENUS THRASH The Fateful Apple URBAN POETS LYRICISTS 2014

To read Venus Thrashs The Fateful Apple (Urban Poets and Lyricists, 2014) is to venture into two assertions of self-hood. The first is a raucous, boundary-setting with the world and the second is reverent consciousness of ancestry and quietude. Thrash plays out her own duality of self and history and takes the reader on a

DAVID BIESPIEL Charming Gardeners UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS 2013

David Biespiels Charming Gardeners (University of Washington Press, 2013) is unlike any book Ive read in a long time. Filled with epistolary poems, his book despite being populated by the poets friends and family is actually a work of great loneliness. In many ways, Biespiels journey is Americas, where the road is both a symbol

MICHAEL ROBBINS Alien vs. Predator PENGUIN BOOKS 2012

Michael Robbins, author of Alien vs. Predator (Penguin Books, 2012), has gotten a lot of attention for his book of poems because of his relentless mashing together of pop-cultural references with literary and scholarly ones. Also, his ubiquitous use of rhyming was strangely considered noteworthy by poetry readers. Why has a mode of expression that

DANA GIOIA Pity the Beautiful GRAYWOLF PRESS 2012

Dana Gioias deference to poetic tradition and artistic beauty is intolerable to those who taste the venom of ideology in every linguistic expression of experience. But what ideology is present in the poets response to having lost a child? More broadly, what ideology is at play when our bodies find pleasure in the music of

LISA OLSTEIN Little Stranger COPPER CANYON PRESS 2013

In Little Stranger (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), Lisa Olstein’s poems are concerned with the tension between the public and the personal and how the former bullies its way into the latter. Olstein’s book is both provoked into existence and inspired by our contemporary moment. Its urgency makes sense when one sees Little Stranger as a

KATY DIDDEN The Glaciers Wake PLEIADES PRESS 2013

The poems in Katy Diddens debut The Glaciers Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013) are civilized and dignified and so are their surfaces: sophisticated soundscapes, pitch-perfect diction, a humane voice. And in The Glaciers Wake, we do, in fact, encounter poems that exhibit a high-level of competency as it relates to craft. And its certainly true that

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ERICA WRIGHT Instructions for Killing the Jackal BLACK LAWRENCE PRESS 2011

As I waded into Erica Wrights first books of poems, I immediately became not only aware of my gender, but the event that is female, woman, girl, and child. In fact, gender that construction site where culture and biology come together to play out their destructive and creative collaboration seems at first to be the

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KEVIN GOODAN Upper Level Disturbances CENTER FOR LITERARY PUBLISHING 2012

Kevin Goodans latest book of poems, Upper Level Disturbances (Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, 2012), directly challenges modern society in at least one respect: the poems exist as a result of humility, the opposite of boasting which our culture rewards. In the poems, were introduced to a speaker whose daily experiences which

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MATTHEW PENNOCK Sudden Dog ALICE JAMES BOOKS 2012

In Sudden Dog, the voice we encounter is a moody one to say the least. We find a poet who at times seems to believe the entire human project is stupid and I mean all of it. While at other times we meet a speaker so desperate for an authentic experience that he claws violently

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Helen Vendler on Emily Dickinson

Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with us about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You.

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ROSS WHITE How We Came Upon the Colony UNICORN PRESS 2015

With air-tight verse and talent for the surreal, Ross White invokes a sibling version of our world in his new collection How We Came Upon the Colony (Unicorn Press, 2014). By tilting our view slightly to the left, he allows us to ask necessary questions of the familiar. How entitled are we to our many

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RACHEL MORITZ Many Forms in Water

Born of a connection to Theodor Schwenk’s 1965 text Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, this collection seeks to inhabit that infinitesimal space left between water and that which holds it. Not everything that conforms to its container is formless— sometimes, like Moritz’s verse, a liquid will become a gas

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LEAH UMANSKY Don Dreams and I Dream KATTYWOMPUS PRESS 2014

At Chapbookapalooza, our headliner goes first.And here she is with a stunning collection of poetry that subverts pop culture by placing it in direct conversation with everything it hints at but is too shifty to engage outright. With Elegant and cerebral verse, Leah Umansky shows us in Don Dreams and I Dream (Kattywompus Press, 2014)

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JASON KOO Americas Favorite Poem CR PRESS 2014

In Jason Koo’s new collection, America’s Favorite Poem (C&R Press, 2014), we see a poet placing himself on the timeline of his art. This timeline covers an ethnic, geographic, and artistic lineage that pays homage to Brooklyn’s literary heritage. As founder of Brooklyn Poets, he extends his literary citizenship to offer community to disparate groups

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KENNETH GOLDSMITH Seven American Deaths and Disasters POWERHOUSE BOOKS 2013

Kenneth Goldsmith’s latest book Seven American Deaths and Disasters (powerHouse Books, 2013), a title taken from the series of Warhol paintings by the same name, is a classic book of defamiliarization. By transcribing the words broadcast in real-time by the media’s unscripted response to historical events, Goldsmith brilliantly drains these infamous moments of cliche. Choosing

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