Circles Where the Head Should Be

Winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, 2010.

The poems in Circles Where the Head Should Be are full of objects and oddities, bits of news, epic catalogues, and a cast of characters hoping to make sense of it all. Underneath the often whimsical surface, however, lies a search for those connections we long for but so often miss, and a wish for art to bridge the gaps.
Circles Where the Head Should Be has its own distinctive voice, a lively intelligence, insatiable curiosity, and a decided command of form. These qualities play off one another in ways that instruct and delight. An irresistible book.”—J. D. McClatchy, author of Mercury Dressing: Poems, judge

Storm and Stress

That a spider web supports a bead of rain
is as significant
as rain’s resolve, poised where some spinneret
has pitched its threads aslant,
since, held or holding, each endures a strain—
one presses, one reacts.
Don’t ask me what it’s worth. Despite the facts
of matter’s favored states,
such concentration’s of no consequence
beyond this life, a net
tailored to break, too late for recompense
when weight evaporates.