Public Abstract

Jane Huffman inks poetry on skin, turning her own body inside out to compose a post-Confessional panoply of fun-filled forms and often idiosyncratic formalities within a constricted/cosmic space, as if Dickinson had wafted down for a play date. Best for those who revel in surprising connections! And that Durer pillow cover is icing on the cake.

What a moving and fascinating book! The poems make me wonder. I love how the poems interact with different forms—the sestina, the haibun, etc.—and subvert and highlight them. Also, love the rhyming. Great sounds in these poems. The poems feel both utterly contemporary and something eccentric from the past. Highly recommend.

Public Abstract is a beautiful, brilliant, formally inventive book. Huffman's poems sing: she uses meter, syntax, sound, repetition and revision to create poems that are both utterly new--revolutionary, really--and at the same time echo Emily Dickinson and Kay Ryan. I feel I'm learning a new poetic language when I read this book, and I'll be returning to it again and again.

Jane Huffman’s Public Abstract combines music, experimentation, and different poetic forms into a challenging but enjoyable book of poetry. As in all great works, the enjoyment comes from discovering new meaning in the poems when rereading them. This isn’t a book of poetry to be read once and forgotten. It has to be read, digested, then reread to grasp its music and scope. I look forward to reading her poems for years to come.

Huffman's lyric sense is extraordinary, her project of the greatest necessity and care. I struggle to remember when I was last so affected by a book of poems, never mind a debut. Buy this book in the knowledge that a dozen reprintings are yet to come, along with who-knows-what accolades for the poet herself!

Huffman's book is absolutely itself. It arises out of a particular ear, eye, and mind, and thus its music and point of view is unique to contemporary poetry. It's moving, but not in the usual way, and astute, and human, but unexpectedly so. It's so rare to come upon a first book of poems that is so distinctive.