Recent & Notable

Katy Lederer, The Heaven-Sent Leaf (Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2008) A fully-realized lyrical examination of different forms of commerce—financial, emotional, physical and amatory; ultimately, The Heaven-Sent Leaf becomes an examination of the forms of commerce between the self and the world the poet trades in. Written with a Stevenesque verve (and restraint), The Heaven-Sent Leaf turns out to be a book uncannily on-target for our times. —Jon Thompson

Endi Bogue Hartigan, One Sun Storm (Fort Collins, Colorado: Colorado State University, 2008). Great wings of poems stretch across the page. Mixing abstract meditation with minute physical examination, Endi Bogue Hartigan attends to the larger meaning of the world by scrupulously sifting through its particulars, particulars that take on a luminous sheen in her handling of them. It’s big country and it remains in the mind. —Jon Thompson

Justin Marks, A Million in Prizes (Kalamazoo, Michigan: New issues Poetry Prize, 2009). The central sequence in the collection, “[Summer   insular],” possesses a wily minimalism, a wry poise in meeting life’s quandaries and a winsomeness all of its own—Jon Thompson.  As Carl Phillips puts it: “A Million in Prizes seduces in the best way: subtly, with a poignant wit and a sly charm.”

Joe Bonomo, Installations (New York: Penguin, 2008). A Borges-like invention machine in which each poem in the collection presents an imaginary installation piece through which Bonomo stages his meditations on time, mortality, technology, contemporary identity and art. These curious prose poems are as arresting as they are disquieting. —Jon Thompson

Joe Massey, Areas of Fog (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2009). If you like William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, Lorine Niedecker and Larry Eigner, you’ll find a fellow traveler in Joseph Massey, who looks and sounds like a latter- day Objectivist--Jon Thompson.  “Joseph Massey sees with a composer’s eye and sings in a microtonality all his own. Syllable by syllable phenomena miraculously unfold. This is fantastic work, understated, charmed and open.” —Peter Gizzi