Best Poetry Books of 2011 - Lucy Biederman

Lucy Biederman's selections:

Say So by Dora Malech (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)
"full blown and come to blows and left / full well enough alone, rose from the playing dead / to heads"

Correct Animal by Rebecca Farivar (Octopus Books)
"This morning you said / my hair is always / perfect. Meaning, / you have loved someone / other than me."

The Grief Performance by Emily Kendal Frey (Cleveland State University)
"In the sun / pants riding / my hips I was / so beautiful // Why did you leave / me open / like that?"

Light-Headed by Matt Hart (BlazeVOX)
"Amazing how it happens, the ever forever / I don't intend to get all minimal on your ass, but / the fact that I'm running meant I'm running out of gas"

The Bigger World by Noelle Kocot (Wave Books)
"Saskia was afraid to look outside. / So instead she looked into the void, / And there were rose petals."

I Heart Your Fate by Anthony McCann (Wave Books)
"I'm down in my life / With you name in my face"

The City, Our City by Wayne Miller (Milkweed Editions)
"Smoke // rises from the chimneys, / then the air conditioners whirr // against the descended / heat. While all around us, / folks keep lying down / inside their parents' fears--"

Poet by Default by Tristan Corbiere (trans. Noelle Kocot) (Wave Books)
"In the twisted marrow / A tear springs / Within it I see paradise"

Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You by Lea Graham (No Tell Books)
"But I keep thinking of you like Columb & Williams thought of Wayne C. Booth, writing his voice into the third edition of The Craft of Research years after he died."

Rambo Goes to Idaho by Scott Abels (BlazeVOX)
"I could feel a question, / a good bridge for everyone, / coming on, / I saw it as a smile / incapable of simple declarative sentences, / and the answer was love."

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Lucy Biederman's life is like an episode of Queen for a Day, but still she buys small-press poetry books from independent sellers. Her chapbook The Other World is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in Spring 2012.