Abridged: Erasure Poems (Paperback or Softback)

Abridged is a whimsical walk through the alphabet as well as the dictionary—or, at least, what is left of it. Hunley’s poems offer a mix of familiar and unfamiliar words along with familiar and unfamiliar snippets of their definitions, with each new line offering a new word and snippet. Much of the pleasure is found in how a definition cuts off and then maps to the word beginning the next line. Simultaneous to seeing the fragments here, a reader will find connection in the disconnection or will work to invent connection in order to provide the continuity any mind desires. For the fun of it, I recommend walking with Hunley.

—Nathan Spoon, author of The Importance of Being Feeble-Minded

Just as all poetry is a resistance to the dictionary’s controlling reduction of speech, in Abridged Hunley swerves & pecks at the English language, building bridges out of zigzags, freeing words to echo & eddy their definition’s stark rhythms, recovering the I that breathes inside the X.

—Mathias Svalina, author of Destruction Myth

What a strange and wonderful collection Abridged is. It reinvigorates language while maintaining beautiful accessibility. Hunley has found a striking balance between sonics, imagery and narrative, so that in our reading of his work we forget ourselves. It’s a struggle to think of these poems in excerpt, considering how well they work in their wholeness. Readers find themselves reacting not to a single line or phrase but to the poems in their entirety—I can’t think of a much rarer occurrence in poetry. The poems are like miniature paintings, and yet we are taken in by just how full and lush they are.

—Adam Day, author of Illuminated Edges