Stephanie Anderson

The Nightyard Stephanie Anderson

Poems. Like a steampunk great-grandniece of Lorine Niedecker, Stephanie Anderson has cobbled together a quirky, hardscrabble, and defiantly pre-digital idiolect in THE NIGHTYARD. Scrupulously crafted and a little austere in temperament, Anderson's poems read, in part, like studies of the Protestant work ethic run amok, trusting in hard facts and practical tips to tame a mind 'too bound to reverie.' Anderson offsets the smothered music of 'a barrel organ being--quelched' with the racket that emerges when 'all the tiny pianos begin to tilt off the shelves, ' correcting the rage for order with a dose of human chaos. The poems in The Nightyard are wise, tireless, uncommonly passionate and truly hard-won. Trust in them.--Timothy Donnelly