The Shape of a Box

In an era of poetic plain speak, when so few voices in the great cacophony of American verse rise to distinguish themselves from the dryness of daily talk, or even from each other, it's a pleasure to encounter the sinewy lines and supple syntax, the rigorous intelligence and propulsive rhythms of Grace Curtis's The Shape of a Box. - George Bilgere. In Grace Curtis's The Shape of a Box a love of language as its own source and subject, with and without external reference, rubs elbows with the readily recognizable world of the everyday. Within the range of such a gaze, "A paycheck is a waterfall, firm and crisp," and words "buzz around/my head like killer bees, cross the tract of no-man's land/the DMZ." With the clarity of Sherwood Anderson and the spirit of Gertrude Stein, Grace Curtis's poems track the root of common experience in the extraordinary and the extraordinary in the familiar. - Stephen Haven