Kristin Naca’s first book Bird Eating Bird was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the National Poetry Series and published October 2009 by HarperCollins. Naca’s language is similar to her title—her poems are delicate, meticulously edited, and at times ravenously devour the reader.
Author archives for Susie DeFord
Kristin Naca: Word Eating Bird
November 16, 2009 – 2:50 pm
Fady Joudah: Translating Darwish
November 9, 2009 – 1:27 pm
Houston, Texas doctor and poet Fady Joudah translated Darwish’s If I Were Another and The Butterfly’s Burden, which won a TLS Translation Prize (the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize) for Arabic Literary Translation from the Society of Authors in the UK. Joudah’s first collection of poetry, The Earth in the Attic, was published in the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 2008.
Rachel Zucker: Poetry Doula
November 2, 2009 – 3:17 pm
Thumbing through the pages of my newly acquired review copies I came across the press release for Rachel Zucker’s latest book Museum of Accidents (Wave Books October 2009). It read “A brutally honest epic of domestic proportions.” I began reading the book and found a brutally honest account of marriage, motherhood, and daily life—the good and bad of it all expressed in a compelling urgency shouting from the pages to be heard.
Rachel Levitsky: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
October 19, 2009 – 1:44 pm
In the close quarters of New York City, unless you have great walls, you often become acquainted with your neighbors’ musical tastes, the hours they keep, and even the sex life they may or may not have. Rachel Levitsky’s innovative, smart, and beautifully designed new book Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Presse 2009) illuminates this odd relationship between urban neighbors through a dated log of poetic entries.
Maggie Nelson: True Blue
October 12, 2009 – 12:41 pm
Maggie Nelson’s most recent book Bluets (Wave Books, 2009) is a poetic nonfiction meditation on the color blue. She starts with “Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color,” and goes on to illuminate several factual, historical, and sometimes personal experiences with the color blue.
Mary Jo Bang: The Bride of Alliteration
October 5, 2009 – 2:18 pm
Mary Jo Bang’s poems are full of elbows and sharp, uncomfortable angles. She skillfully delves into the harsh crevices of life and mind and illuminates them with her alliterative, controlled verse. Bang’s latest book The Bride of E (Graywolf Press 2009) continues this tradition with an alphabetized heady contemplation of high and low culture.
Cheryl Dumesnil Gets Up
September 28, 2009 – 10:47 am
Cheryl Dumesnil’s first book In Praise of Falling is the winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. It begins with the Zen proverb, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” This proverb could be a mantra for any aspiring writer.
Survivor: Poetry Edition
September 21, 2009 – 12:11 pm
Campbell McGrath’s latest collection, Shannon, is a book-length poetic narrative about George Shannon, the youngest member of the Corps of Discovery a.k.a The Lewis and Clark Expedition. McGrath creates the unrecorded history of the 16 days George Shannon went missing from the expedition.
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon: The Astronomy of Poetry
September 8, 2009 – 3:43 pm
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s latest book, Open Interval (Pittsburgh Press, 2009), is a lovely meditation on the concept of distance. Open Interval attempts to measure and name the distances between thoughts and bodies, celestial and/or physical.
Matthew Rohrer: Poultry and Poetry?
August 31, 2009 – 11:01 am
What do poultry and poetry have to do with each other? Matthew Rohrer attempts to answer this question in his latest book of poems, A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, May 2009). Each entry of the 55 part series contains seven lines, the first and last of which conclude with the same word.
Akilah Oliver: Good Grief
August 26, 2009 – 11:50 am
I encountered Akilah Oliver’s most recent book A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House Press 2009) with a bit of trepidation as I read “An erudite, gripping manifesto of grief” on the back cover. However, what I found was a joyful book despite the obvious presence of grief’s ghost.
Lisa Birman’s Valentine to the United States
August 12, 2009 – 1:22 pm
The word “Valentine” can’t help but invoke images of cheap, cheesy paper Garfield valentines and boxes of colorful, chalky heart candies that say “Be Mine” and “Hot Stuff.” However, on February 14th 2006, the Austrailian born poet Lisa Birman received a unique valentine from the United States in the form of her green card.
The Biographical Helium of Stacy Szymaszek
August 3, 2009 – 4:12 pm
In the challenging tradition of Joyce and Neidecker, Stacy Szymaszek’s new book Hyperglossia is only for the brave. Avant-garde, heady stuff, it demands a lot of the reader, who is advised to keep a dictionary at hand.
Ivan E. Coyote: Kitchen Table Chronicles
July 23, 2009 – 10:56 am
Born and raised in the Yukon, currently based in Vancouver, Ivan E. Coyote is one of Canada’s most acclaimed storytellers. In her warm “kitchen table” stories, she masterfully bridges the gap between the oral and the written, between genders, and between city and country.
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