Issue 11 – Winter 2006 – Recent & Notable

Recent & Notable

 

Elizabeth Robinson, Apostrophe (Berkeley: Apogee Press, 2006). “The poems are possessed of a paradoxical Gnostic simplicity, their clarity and precision and restraint both laying things (and actions and events) bare and endowing them with an unexpected and almost devotional mystery. They take us to “The inside of the inside/whose ease makes us stumble” and leave us there, lost but newly aware.” –Brian Evenson

Eliot WeinbergerWorld Beat: International Poetry Now from New Directions. (New York: New Directions, 2006). “World poetry from a New Directions perspective: the collection makes no attempt to be all-inclusive, and instead selects poetry that embodies the (post)modernist aesthetic of New Directions. The result is an eclectic, utterly compelling, immensely readable introduction to some of what is happening poetically in, and outside, the U.S.” –Jon Thompson

Franz Wright, God’s Silence. (New York, Knopf 2006). “Franz Wright moves and sounds like no one else right now in American poetry. Whether one shares his faith or not, these stripped-down, richly imagistic poems have a chastened purposefulness, self -knowledge and a lyrical passion reminiscent of George Herbert. They stab the heart and linger in the mind.” –Jon Thompson

Cole Swensen translation of Nicolas Pesques, Physis; Adam Clay’s The Wash; Daniel Tiffany’s Puppet Wardrobe and Tom LiskThese Beautiful Limits (West Lafayette, Indiana: Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions, 2006). Series Editor: Jon Thompson.

Cole Swensen’s translation of Nicolas Pesques’s Physis: “Readers familiar with Jacques Dupin will find a kindred power in Physis. Cole Swensen has rendered Pesques’s spare, wiry poems with an elegant minimalism that brilliantly captures Pesques’ lyrical range and conceptual complexity.” –Jon Thompson

Adam Clay’s The Wash: “These anachronistic poems are small as prayers but without the posturing. Like John Clare on the long walk home from the asylum, their speaker suffers not from attention deficit but from its surplus, pierced by memory, Nature, Oblivion and the Giant Forms in which “the shadows of fish / live as the fish do.” –Joyelle McSweeney

Daniel Tiffany’s Puppet Wardrobe: “Racy, playful, and ultimately rather ominous, these intricate poems gather up centuries in a single sweep and make it all shockingly pop. There is a brooding intelligence here, radiant with fireworks and emergency flares. A brilliant read.” –Cole Swensen

Thomas Lisk’s These Beautiful  Limits: “Lisk traces in creosote our need for love, for power, or just for a good rojo in a proper glass. He shows us a world (our world) that contains maps that don’t talk; peaches out of season; and desire, always desire, burning clearly. An absolute must-read for anyone who cares about the evolution and direction of modern poetry—he takes us on a poetic ride to the 21st century.” –Elizabeth Ash Velez

 

 

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