Recommended Summer Reading - Evie Shockley

During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.

Evie Shockley's recommendations, two books and a reminder:

Expressway by Sina Queyras (Coach House Books)

If you live in NJ, NY, or Philadelphia and have a relationship (intimate or otherwise) with the NJ Turnpike, or if you know any interstate (U.S.) or Canadian highways like the back of your preferred steering-wheel hand, you want to read this book. If the rest of you would like to know what it's like to be attuned to the frequencies of high-speed asphalt and all that goes with it, you should read this book. If you have or want to attain a super-heightened consciousness of the environmental consequences of our being able to travel by car with the ease we have had for the last half-century, you must read this book. If you like your poetry brainy, funny, viseral, and ethical, simultaneously and by turns, you have no excuse for not reading this book. Read more here.

Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen (Hot Whiskey Press)

I read the first half of this book a few months ago, when it was first released, and fell immediately in love with the language and ideas and heart that were flying around in its lines. I couldn't bear to finish it so quickly (a response usually reserved for novels, in my experience), so I put it down . . . and got so buried in work that I have yet to get back to it. My reward: absolutely fabulous summer reading to look forward to. Reward yourself, too.

Reminder. ]Open Interval[ by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Pitt)

Back at Christmas, I recommended a book that I couldn't wait to have its release . . . but I *did* have to wait, as it turns out. Until late April, no less. Now it is in my hot little hands, and I offer you this brief reminder that you deserve (you've been good!) to put a few of your poetry-reading hours into Van Clief-Stefanon's strong, agile hands. This book is not astrology, but it is about what the stars have to tell us about our lives. This book is not a meal, but it is about hungers, how to satisfy them, and at what cost. For details, click here. Soothe your own hot little hands.

* * *

Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Pluck!, The Southern Review, Achiote Seeds, Studio, and, of course, No Tell Motel, among others. Currently a co-editor of jubilat, she teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.