Synopsis
This debut volume of poems, the recipient of Fence Book's Alberta Prize, negotiates between the levels of reality with swift formal innovation.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-10-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 4.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
Chelsey Minnis's formal invention and wild personae represent a progressive yet individualized position in the galaxy of truly contemporary poetry. Zirconia's female speaker is by turns fatigued, charmed, wishful, battered, sly, perverse, and omnipotent. These poems engage a material world not unlike ours yet featuring a phantasmagorically elliptical relationship to the dimension of real action.
Industry Reviews
"[An] often deeply satisfying debut....Though Minnis's narrative voice--half-smirking, half-weeping--lends ZIRCONIA much of its appeal, the poet's most striking (and daring) move is a stylistic one."
Village Voice - Joanna Smith Rakoff (01/09/2002)
"[S]tart at the beginning of Zirconia and work your way through its garden of earthly delights: the book bristles with originality. "
Electronic Poetry Review (02/01/2002)
"Minnis, a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and a keystone in Fence Book's young American poets line, makes a starry debut in this slight but dazzling ravishment of phrase fragments and pearled ellipses. Minnis' effort is, in a word, brilliant, as the titular wink suggests. It is not, however, glaringly imitative, though the demonology it conjures is not unlike Sexton and Plath's...In the end, praise for Zirconia must end up in superlatives, though not the 'diamond-quality,' knock-off variety the title ironically anticipates. Minnis is careful not to undersell her gift in this first collection, whose dazzling moments belong both to a wildchild improviser and a sage conductor."
Black Warrior Review
"While much of the book's mystique arises from her playful formal constructions, there is real charm at work here....The voice of the book teases us into following wherever it wanders. Likewise, the characters that inhabit Minnis's poems are somewhat cartoonish, yet we never question their reality."
Rain Taxi Review of Books
"Minnis seems to recognize that her only defense against enormous fragility is to announce it everywhere, detail it, expose her weak spots, and defy the likelihood of attack. This vulnerability comes out in the candid voice that she uses throughout; it's an almost impossibly innocent voice, but so flat that it never becomes coy. Instead, it gradually builds into a quietly nerve-wracking tension. When is this innocent going to realize the danger?<BR>But in the manner of the truly innocent, she lightly, almost accidentally, sidesteps disaster. Then innocence twists, and she turns back to become the aggressor."
Boston Review - Cole Swensen
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