by Brian Blanchfield (Author)
Poetry. As in the title phrase--borrowed from a 17th century poem by Robert Herrick--in which several is used to individuate, questions of singularity and the plural, of subjectivity and the collective, pervade this dream-quick poetry. In A SEVERAL WORLD there are glimpses of an us down here--in the understory, in the open clearing--and, by various projections, there is frequent attainment of an aerial vantage, a post otherwise abdicated. Landscape here is spatial theater, and a choreography recruits all standalone selves: solidarity beginning in an erotics of attunement, catching likenesses.
This clever, busy, anxious, flirtatious poet, with his 'predilections for predicaments, ' can connect anything to anything else.--Stephen Burt, The New York Times Book Review
Author Biography
Brian Blanchfield is the author of the poetry collections Not Even Then (2004) and A SEVERAL WORLD (Nightboat Books, 2014). His recent work has appeared in The Nation, Chicago Review, The Paris Review, and Guernica. He lives in Tucson, where he teaches at the University of Arizona.