Rumor: Poems

In Rumor, her third collection of poems, Pimone Triplett summons diverse Eastern and Western influences to reckon the public and private costs of the overwhelming glut of "intelligence," or information, that we face in contemporary life. Triplett relays the voices, both personal and distant, that too often are only partially heard. The most difficult realities of family life are chronicled in "Family Spirits, with Voice of One Child Miscarried," in which Triplett uses free verse that incorporates the traditional Thai verse form of khap yanii.

Over the course of the book, she explores how a child grows from a hint, a rumor, to a full force of intelligence and knowing. "Motherland" and "Last Wave" amplify voices, respectively, of exploited children in the brutal Thai sex trade and the victims in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The fragmentary nature of rumor, whether in the form of tabloid gossip or in the spread of partial knowledge, has consequence on a personal and even a world historical scale in Triplett's powerful poems.

Pimone Triplett is an associate professor in the creative writing program at the University of Washington. She has published two books of poems, The Price of Light (2005) and Ruining the Picture (Northwestern, 1998), and coedited an anthology, Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play (2008). Among her awards are the Larry Levis Poetry Prize and the Hazel Hall Poetry Prize. She also teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.