Soul in Space
"Illuminated, feral, Kocot's creativity engenders an excitement comparable to being twelve years old, exposed to good poetry or music or art for the first time. . . . One can't help but to be unsteady, but believe in that instability. . . . She leaves us hanging in the best way: always about to fall, always about to be saved."—Nick Sturm, Coldfront
"Characterized by an utter irreducibility, Noelle Kocot's poetry displays an elemental movement of thinking and suggests a poetics of vision."—Jean-Paul Pecqueur, Rain Taxi
Noelle Kocot's poetry resets hierarchies in favor of a world outside of time or telescope. Soul in Space is a masterful combination of Kocot's intimacy and authority over poetic form, and leaves a brighter and weirder world in its wake.
But now, back to our story,
It has coffee in it, a naked river.
Blessed are we who rapture
An electric wire, blessed be
The falling things about our faces,
Blessed is the socket of an eye
That lights the body, because
In the end, in the very end, it's
Just you. You and you. And you.
Noelle Kocot is the author of six collections of poetry. Her work has been featured in The Best American Poetry (2012 and 2013) and in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (edited by Paul Hoover). She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Fund for Poetry, and the American Poetry Review. She lives in New Jersey.
Noelle Kocot is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011), and a book of translations of poems by Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (Wave Books, 2011). Her previous works include the discography Damon's Room (Wave Books Pamphlet Series, 2010), Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006). She is also the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune (both from Four Way Books). Her poems were included in the Best American Poetry anthologies for 2001, 2012, and 2013, as well as in the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry edited by Paul Hoover. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, The Fund for Poetry and the American Poetry Review, as well as a residency fellowship from Lannan Foundation. She currently lives in New Jersey.
