LINEbooks, 2006
Natalie Simpson’s gathering of prose poems draw the reader towards coherence while simultaneously pushing back, breaking up and falling away. A practice of language, at once smart and funny, that roosts in the syllable while flying from phrase to phrase.
Reviews
“In a world where we are trained daily to accept language without meaning, and to support it, buy it, vote for it, collaborate in the death of it, these words in their mellifluous order, let us look again, and hear, and in the seemingly random couplings new meanings or possibilities emerge.”
– Sina Queyras, Lemon Hound
“Simpson is interested in whether words still communicate when shorn of their grammar. Her book is evidence that they do, and the poems that result reward our close reading.”
– Clint Burnham, The Vancouver Sun
“I was drawn especially to those moments where the poems seemed to reflect the conditions of their own making, teaching us how to read what they’re doing as they do it: ‘particulars fall as leaves fall;’ ‘these occur often in sentence structure playing field;’ ‘what bales words out of rhythm;’ ‘her speak expands to boom.'”
– Rodney Koeneke, Modern Americans
“Phonemes and morphemes are like stocks, like biosystems: they accrete or crumble. Simpson’s structures are puzzlingly economical, the work of production rather than product of unacknowledged work.”
– Tim Conley, Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review
“Natalie Simpson displays a masterful command of language in this thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of poetry. Natalie Simpson is one of the few writers who can subvert syntax to create an alternate language structure and still communicate effectively. A must-read for anyone interested in the advancement of language and poetry.”
– John Goodman, Goodreads
“Ah, accrete or crumble, so beautiful and yet so difficult. What are we to do with you?”
– Garry Thomas Morse, Meta-Talon
Distribution
endlich himmelblau by extranoise
LINEbooks (New Star Books)
Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe
McNally Robinson Booksellers
Langton Info Services (England)
Audiatur (Norway)
Press
Natalie Simpson 