Winner of the 2011 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize
“There is a subtle mind embodied in Meredith Cole’s quick poems, which operate
on an odd combination of understatement,
inference and smart-aleckness. As
the title Miniatures suggests, her poems are often constructs of transience and delicacy from a quasi-Asian tradition — but these values are also challenged and debunked by the wit and pragmatism of a highly American speaker. This collection is a lively, worthwhile and engaging trip.”
—Tony Hoagland |
Categories are not abstractions, they are bodies. Family is one such embodied category, gender another. What happens to bodies when they don’t fit the categories assigned them, when they lack
families, when they criss-cross gender or genre lines? ... Eileen R. Tabios and j/j hastain are trans-parents to a
fresh embodiment of words and bodies, and to what they mean when they come together as books and persons. Their writing counts the change(s) in
unexpected vocabularies.
— Susan M. Schultz |
“In these newest of her poems, Harriet Zinnes has dared to accept the deepest challenge of all writing: i.e. to dwell in the moment that is the seed-time of
moments and in the image that rests forever within the disappearance of all
images once beloved. Here is an unconditional clarity. Here are poems whose singularities are never less than complete.”
—Donald Revell |
Steve Fellner: The Weary World Rejoices
“Steve Fellner takes us into the hidden places in this beautiful and frightening collection. Here is testimony to the brave and shameful impulses of the human heart, composed in language that is both familiar and completely original.... You will not forget these poems.” —Laura Kasischke
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Paolo Javier: The Feeling Is Actual
“Javier hits the big notes: sex, romance, even aging and regret. The poetry often comes in the form of prose ... and of visual poetry in which comics collide with sly wit. All this with the multi-cultural vantage we expect from the poet, which comes to the fore in later sections, abetted by found images and typography. 'if im like a piece of bok choy / then you are probably / a piece of broccoli… /its just the communication thing.' Listen to this book, watch it, lap it up.” —Vincent Katz |
Mary Mackey: Sugar Zone
"Mary Mackey takes you on a fascinating journey to the interior, somewhere between Saint Theresa’s Inner Castle and the thicket of Eros—but also a place of desperate actuality, even if it is 'on the other side of the world.' Mackey joins other visionary poets of dépaysement —Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan. But Mackey really seems to recover a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forro, and death . . . SUGAR ZONE authoritatively creates a language and a culture; but the lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home." —Dennis Nurkse |
