The Circle Line

"The figurative subtlety and range of these poems made this book an imaginative feast. Throughout, I had a sense that I was being presented the story of a life by means of a deeper language, as if Jorn Ake has figured out how to speak directly through the feelings that attach to actions, objects and memories. With a work this metaphorical, I look at what recurs—the desert and childhood, photography and music, violence on a personal and political scale—and there is an ongoing, loving nod to the artists who have shaped this poet's mind. I also sense that what drives his work is a desire to characterize the feeling of a time period, the later 20th century, with all its 'blindness/flying moth-crazy about the light.' I cannot turn away from these poems. This is a fascinating book"—Bob Hickok.

Jorn Ake graduated from the College of William and Mary with a BA in Fine Arts and then worked as a painter for ten years, before moving to Arizona to complete an MFA in creative writing at Arizona State University. His first collection of poems, Asleep in the Lightning Fields, won the 2001 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize and was published by Texas Review Press. In 2003, he was awarded an Arizona Commission on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. Popular Ink published a chapbook of his work, All About the Blind Spot and Other Poems, in 2007. His third book, Boys Whistling like Canaries, won the 2008 Blue Lynx Prize and was published by Eastern Washington University Press. He currently lives in New York City.