The Equalizing Jokebook

<p class=ql-align-justify>Somewhere at the heart of every event in the universe there is an ever unfolding process indistinguishable from what we might call 'play.' In<em> The Equalizing Jokebook</em><strong> Rose Novick</strong> knows this. 'Who can find the logic of this?' these poems ask of our world. 'Truly our thoughts fall short of the gods'.' And yet for Novick this is not a lamentation for the epistemological horizon is a place to dance to laugh to stare into the unknown and sing. This quite simply is one of the most original whimsical and yet well-wrought gatherings of poems I have encountered in quite some time. Open it and enjoy it 'featherlight freely and easily.'</p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong>-Joseph Fasano</strong> author of <em>The Swallows of Lunetto</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong>Rose Novick'</strong>s debut collection <em>The Equalizing Jokebook</em> offers the reader an astonishing journey from Zhuangzi (from which the collection draws its title) and an assortment of Greek philosophers to Paul Klee and the mirrordark water of the muddy Wabash. A deeply learned book that nevertheless wears that learning lightly Novick's collection alternatively breaks your heart and then busts your gut and it does so while asking the questions we all care most deeply about: identity loneliness joy purpose. The contents and their intellectual underpinning at times evoke a contemporary poet like Troy Jollimore but so often Novick branches out in new and exciting ways: nonce metrical forms engaging perspectives surprising metaphor. Her figurative language frequently calls the reader to relate to the most overlooked lifeforms as the wonderful sonnet Low Tide compares tragic miscommunication to barnacles that guessed wrong. In this and so much more Novick is a poet who resists pandering to the reader and who trusts her own voice. She is exceptional at creating engaging rhythms: her poems range from prosimetra to syllabics to more traditional English iambs. Indeed Novick delights above all in the beautiful sounds which language offers in particular excelling in subtle assonances and consonances that cause the reader to stop and smile. This collection demands to be read aloud and I don't know that a higher praise can be given to a collection of poetry than that.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong>-Andrew Szilvasy</strong> author of <em>Witness Marks</em></p><p><br></p>