art by Patrick Yagow
Praise for Clothesline Saga...
"Noah Burton’s poems are intimate and electric, familiar and entirely original at once.Clothesline Saga is a love song for the American condition, one that “smolders on the hot plate between church’s chicken and home.” Full of associative high jinks and lyrical brilliance that hits you in the gut, these poems stare wide-eyed and open-hearted at our contemporary world, offering a soundtrack that rings in your ears long after the book is closed. A wild and beautiful ride."
--Kai Carlson-Wee, author of Rail (BOA Editions Ltd.)
“The poems in Clothesline Saga are about inhabiting desirous American spaces, houses and rooms with leaking drop ceilings, the blank pastorals of snow that stretch from the plains straight through New England, the inhospitable to actual life, on one hand, and the counter moves of dwelling, on the other. Against chattering repetitions and grandiosity, goats fall out of doors as if they expected to find rocks. Lovers unbutton their warm shirts for each other. Otherwise, things feel lonely and frustrating. That's how it goes sometimes, in the general synecdoche. Or are these poems set in Schenectady? These are authentic, uncommon, companionable, and objective poems.”
--David Blair, author of Barbarian Seasons (MadHat Press)
available now at Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.
"Noah Burton’s poems are intimate and electric, familiar and entirely original at once.Clothesline Saga is a love song for the American condition, one that “smolders on the hot plate between church’s chicken and home.” Full of associative high jinks and lyrical brilliance that hits you in the gut, these poems stare wide-eyed and open-hearted at our contemporary world, offering a soundtrack that rings in your ears long after the book is closed. A wild and beautiful ride."
--Kai Carlson-Wee, author of Rail (BOA Editions Ltd.)
“The poems in Clothesline Saga are about inhabiting desirous American spaces, houses and rooms with leaking drop ceilings, the blank pastorals of snow that stretch from the plains straight through New England, the inhospitable to actual life, on one hand, and the counter moves of dwelling, on the other. Against chattering repetitions and grandiosity, goats fall out of doors as if they expected to find rocks. Lovers unbutton their warm shirts for each other. Otherwise, things feel lonely and frustrating. That's how it goes sometimes, in the general synecdoche. Or are these poems set in Schenectady? These are authentic, uncommon, companionable, and objective poems.”
--David Blair, author of Barbarian Seasons (MadHat Press)
available now at Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.
PRAISE FOR LOOK OUT ANIMAL...
“When the poetry gloom lies heavy upon my head, I have only to remember that these poems are in the world, & for a moment then my life is made whole. Originality of imagination is the rarest of gifts, but Noah Burton makes it looks effortless—his poems remind us of how vulnerable & funny & wondrous & sad & beautifully strange our lives really are. There is a gigantic composure breathing within even the most antic of his lines. His inventions restore me, down to the deepest parts of my heart. I know of no poet under the age of thirty who comes close to what he can do. Silver shadow!”
--David Rivard, author of Standoff, winner of the 2017
PEN/New England Award for poetry.
"...Here there are slanted New England pastorals, Frost gone surreal or crossed with Kafka and fashioned into parables. A boy climbs into the earth where the vegetables serve as tribunal. A speaker regrets his biking leaving for a convenience store that doesn’t serve bikes. There is as much reverence and apocalyptic mourning for the earth in this book as there is visionary hopefulness in the strangeness of humanity and its ability to take the good and bad on equal terms. "
--Tanya Larkin, author of My Scarlet Ways, winner of the 2011 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize
"Everyone who inhabits the world in Noah Burton’s crushing debut inhabits a world that is poised on the brink of chaos. It’s a book that sneakily tackles the ever-urgent subject of whether or not we should lie back and resign ourselves to anarchy or buck up and fight another day for love and humility. Amidst mobs, firefighters throw burning mattresses into the street, and there’s also a horse, and he’s hungry. When’s the last time you heard news so ominous? Omens be damned, Noah stares back at all this pleasureless pain and jaws into it with candor, humor, and compassion, which is the hardest work to do in poetry these days. “The deer / walk away at night / with flowers in their mouths / and there’s light from / a nearby train,” he writes. If you ask me this book is both the light and the train."
--Danniel Schoonebeek, author of Trébuchet , selected as a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series
“When the poetry gloom lies heavy upon my head, I have only to remember that these poems are in the world, & for a moment then my life is made whole. Originality of imagination is the rarest of gifts, but Noah Burton makes it looks effortless—his poems remind us of how vulnerable & funny & wondrous & sad & beautifully strange our lives really are. There is a gigantic composure breathing within even the most antic of his lines. His inventions restore me, down to the deepest parts of my heart. I know of no poet under the age of thirty who comes close to what he can do. Silver shadow!”
--David Rivard, author of Standoff, winner of the 2017
PEN/New England Award for poetry.
"...Here there are slanted New England pastorals, Frost gone surreal or crossed with Kafka and fashioned into parables. A boy climbs into the earth where the vegetables serve as tribunal. A speaker regrets his biking leaving for a convenience store that doesn’t serve bikes. There is as much reverence and apocalyptic mourning for the earth in this book as there is visionary hopefulness in the strangeness of humanity and its ability to take the good and bad on equal terms. "
--Tanya Larkin, author of My Scarlet Ways, winner of the 2011 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize
"Everyone who inhabits the world in Noah Burton’s crushing debut inhabits a world that is poised on the brink of chaos. It’s a book that sneakily tackles the ever-urgent subject of whether or not we should lie back and resign ourselves to anarchy or buck up and fight another day for love and humility. Amidst mobs, firefighters throw burning mattresses into the street, and there’s also a horse, and he’s hungry. When’s the last time you heard news so ominous? Omens be damned, Noah stares back at all this pleasureless pain and jaws into it with candor, humor, and compassion, which is the hardest work to do in poetry these days. “The deer / walk away at night / with flowers in their mouths / and there’s light from / a nearby train,” he writes. If you ask me this book is both the light and the train."
--Danniel Schoonebeek, author of Trébuchet , selected as a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series
Look Out Animal (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2018) is now available here.