Two Sides of the Same Thing

“With ‘dark swollen words and shifting air,’ Matthew Nienow builds poems as if building boats, ‘each strip like a tree’s growth,’ and ‘asking the question rivers are always asking: why?’ From Nienow I am grateful to have learned that poetry ‘is movement with one desire: to pull at whatever it touches.’ There is much talk these days of the importance of a poet’s voice. But here we have proof that a poet’s ear… for music, for complexity, for ‘the prodigal aria returning home’…is just as important.” — Todd Boss