Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Jenn Koiter

Jenn Koiter's selections:

This Awkward Art by Conrad Hilberry and Jane Hilberry (Mayapple Press)
A father and daughter juxtapose poems that address the subjects they share: his grandson/her nephew, snow, Vermeer, the childhood death of her sister/his daughter. It may sound gimmicky, but, given that they are both darn good poets, it actually works, and works well. Loved this book.

Incident Light by H. L. Hix (Etruscan Press)
In his first published book in well over a month (I jest, of course! Though I am starting to consider Hix the Joyce Carol Oates of poetry publishing), Hix writes about an artist friend who learned when she was 49 that the man who raised her was not her biological father. It's eerie and gorgeous, with language as precise as we've come to expect from Hix. Mythologizing the ordinary. Dig it.

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Jenn Koiter lives in Wyoming, and she is planning to start her own conspiracy theory in which Candy Jones does, too. Probably with the witness protection program, in Lusk.