Interrobang - Softcover

Piazza, Jessica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597097225 ISBN 13: 9781597097222

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2013

Synopsis

Existing at the intersection of darkness and play, the noisy, irreverent, and self-conscious poems in Interrobang take clinical “phobias” and clinical “philias” as their conceit. Each poem makes its own music, the crescendos and decrescendos born of obsessions over anxiety and lust. Encompassing a range of forms (but mostly sonnets), each piece toes the line between traditional meter and contemporary sonic play, while a tell-tale heart beats beneath the floor of the collection, constantly reminding us of our shames, fears, and the clock’s unrelenting ticking. Through individual stories about love, degradation of the self, the redemptive power of genuine humility, and the refuge offered by art and language, Interrobang, winner of the 2012 A Room of Her Own Foundation To the Lighthouse Poetry Publication Prize, illustrates how even the worst-case scenario of these pathologies are, fundamentally, just extensions of the dark truths to which every one of us can relate.

About this title

About the Author:

Jessica Piazza was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has written three poetry collections: Interrobang (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2011 AROHO to the Lighthouse Poetry Prize and the 2013 Balcones Prize for Poetry, a chapbook called This is not a sky (Black Lawrence Press) and Obliterations, a collection of erasure poems co-authored with Heather Aimee O'Neill (Red Hen Press, forthcoming).  She holds a BS in Journalism from Boston University, an MA in Creative Writing from UT Austin, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. She co-founded Bat City Review and Gold Line Press, is a contributing editor at The Offending Adam, and has blogged for The Best American Poetry and Barrelhouse. Her work has appeared in Agni, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, National Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Rattle, Hobart, and Forklift, Ohio, among other journals. 

Review:

“Jessica Piazza’s brilliantly conceived debut collection, Interrobang, is a stunning sequence of (primarily) sonnets that unfolds with both a mature formal acuity and a profound philosophical sophistication. It is an absolute tour de force. These poems emerge as reflections of a kaleidoscopic self as they interrogate those fears and desires that drive and haunt us. Whatever the answers might be to these exclamatory questions, the speaker of these beautiful and troubling poems knows she has only one response available to her―to continue regardless, and to persevere.”
―David St. John 

“Jessica Piazza leaps fully-armed from the head (and heady tradition) of linguistic-trickster poets like Father Hopkins and Heather McHugh. Interrobang hits the ground running, lobbing bolts of syntactical lightning, taking the reader hostage to the most dazzling radical harmonies―a word-music that shakes us awake, powers new insights―stands us on the very edge of a rock ‘n’ roll minefield, waving a white flag. We give in! We got it! This is great poetry!”
―Carol Muske-Dukes 

“What an ear, here! Jessica Piazza’s poems are such etched, alive word sculptures, crystal prism poems of love and longing and punch.”
―Aimee Bender

“Jessica Piazza is an heir of Hopkins, a poet engaging generously in metaphysical struggle. In this unusually deft book, she sets out to offer her voice on the altar of iambic pentameter and shares the fears she encounters there with quirky, firm metrical dexterity and breathtakingly succinct wit. Interrobang is a serious accomplishment.”
―Annie Finch 

“Interrobang thrums gorgeously―each page is full-throated and sexy. It’s a yearning yo-yo, a gemlike cutting through our loves and fears. It is a book rabid with life. Piazza’s razor-sharp collection weaves and knots the unknowable with a jubilance and wit too rare in contemporary poetry. Interrobang is fantastic debut collection.”
―Alex Lemon, author of Happy: A Memoir and Fancy Beasts

“Many of these poems are brave and sensuous, and it’s refreshing to see Piazza capturing not so much her shifting emotions as her understanding of them...Promising work from a writer worth watching.”
 ―Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1597097225
• ISBN 13: 9781597097222
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72