Brian Connell

Brian Connell is perhaps the best kind of dreamboat--one who is already betting on intimacy's work lasting longer than the glitter of high winds and long kisses. His songs hint at the golden lining of beginnings, but focus more fully on the entropy that he insists is where romance can be trusted in its exposure. These are not odes to melodrama or highliving. Connell's voice is plaintive, and he howls and croons not to sweep you off your feet, but to make your gut swing because he can call you on the lost moments of driving your car, standing at a party, cutting coupons, lost in the whammy of the world and one's place in it. Grandiose. Yes. The stuff of literature. Yes. These are odes to our empty pantries--the ones only holding candied yams and rice--that are
in most homes, both the happy and the sordid.

Nida Sophasarun

Nida Sophasarun's poems refuse to sit still. The liveliness of her mind means that a household's collection of glasses are as worthy of her careful attention as exotic birds in far-flung places. The generosity of these poems means that her readers learn, in the grace of the poems' unfoldings, how the nonhuman elements in our worlds speak to the vulnerability of the individual who is looking for connection. Hers are lines you want to read slowly, out loud, delighting in the words as well as the twists and turns that they lead you through, because Nida Sophasarun is "telling you the truth / even if it's not all // completely true."