Grey Slate

GREY SLATE is a collection of poems that focuses on the natural world in order to explore the mysteries of life with the intent to create a meditation on what it means to be a human being interacting with this world. Inspired by John Keats’ theory of Negative Capability, GREY SLATE does not seek to explain, but to dwell in the mysteries it explores. The poems are tied together through similar images or ideas in order to mimic the way the mind works as it jumps from thought to thought. GREY SLATE also mixes different types of poems: from haiku to sonnet to paradelle, and from lyric to narrative to prose poem. GREY SLATE hopes to inspire readers to take a break from searching for truths and indulge in the beautiful mystery that is life with no need for answers.

The Road from Emmaus

THE ROAD FROM EMMAUS is a collection of 20 personal and lyric essays that explores the narrator’s role as mother and daughter through a close look at significant life events, including her parents’ divorce, a high-risk pregnancy, the death of her father, talking to her daughter for the first time about sex, and accompanying her daughter to the DMV for a learner’s permit. Through examining familial roles and relationships, the narrator’s longing for home emerges as a unifying theme. The essays in THE ROAD FROM EMMAUS vary in style and tone, from light and funny to serious and probing. The collection is divided into five sections, each highlighting a different aspect of the narrator’s life as she evolves from a child, to a young adult, a mother, and a daughter who must help take care of her aging parents.

Blotto in the Lifeboat

Blotto in the Lifeboat is a book of poems that investigates natural processes and idiosyncrasies of human societies. Ranging from the absurd to the scientific in tone, the poems in Blotto in the Lifeboat situate themselves on the blurry-line between fact and imagination, employing a style that Thomas Lux describes as “imaginative realism.” The middle of three sections is comprised solely of the long poem, “A Compendium of the True and Wondrous,” which collages remarkable facts and anecdotes to highlight the strange realities of the world and the rapidity of change. The first and third sections contain shorter, narrative poems in which the surreal or comic is often employed. The language of the poems in BLOTTO IN THE LIFEBOAT reflects a similar desire to affix the fantastic to the familiar. Metaphors in the tradition of Elizabeth Bishop and Charles Simic rely on wild leaps of imagination to illuminate the real world.

Nec(Romantic)

NEC(ROMANTIC) is a poetry collection thematically linked through images of insects, celestial bodies, bones, and other elements of the supernatural. These images are indicative of spells, but the parenthesis around romantic in the collection’s title also implies idealism. The poems explore the author’s experiences with death, grief, love, oppression, and addiction. NEC(ROMANTIC) employs the use of traditional forms such as the villanelle, sestina, and haiku to organize these experiences. Prose poetry and a peca kucha ground the center of NEC(ROMANTIC) which alternates between lyrical and narrative gestures. NEC(ROMANTIC) is influenced by Sylvia Plath. The author uses Plath’s methods of compression, sound, and rhythm to create a swift, child-like tone when examining emotionally laden topics. Ilya Kaminsky influences lyrical elements of the poems, including surrealism. Spencer Reese’s combination of the natural and personal world is also paramount to this book. Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde influence NEC(ROMANTIC)’s political poetry.

Asterisms

ASTERISMS is a collection of lyric poetry that seeks to express a sense of awe for the natural world by exploring themes of science, art, and the self. By combining physics and metaphysics, scientific terminology and musings on love, ASTERISMS argues that these seemingly-disparate fields of knowledge can harmonize in unexpected ways. In its style, the collection draws from the works of Dorianne Laux, Pablo Neruda, and Annie Dillard. Most of the poems are written in free-version and are tied together by images of astronomy and wilderness, both modern and prehistoric. Poems about classical music appear as interludes meant to complement others concerned with science and technology, as music too has its own invented language. Like asterisms - ancient inventions meant to personalize the expansive mystery of the night sky - this collection seeks to admire, if not completely understand, our place in the natural world and cosmos beyond.