“For those of us who believe in words—their merit as instruments of inquiry, their aptitude for beauty, their power of linking soul to soul—these are difficult times. Open these pages, and find your hope restored. Susan Gubernat’s are poems of meticulous craftsmanship, luminous apprehension, and unfailing heart. I’m grateful beyond measure for this book.”
“Rising out of experience—painful, beautiful, disruptive—The Zoo at Night offers an unflinching look at an imperfect world underlain with a conviction to hope.”
“‘Beauty is always strange,’ says Baudelaire, and in Susan Gubernat’s brilliant The Zoo at Night, we have a grand tour of the many ways the world, arriving directly under our noses, can remain, everlastingly, embodied and mysterious.”
“In a country which seems to produce an endless procession of poetry books on High Culture, Susan Gubernat’s title says it all: Flesh. Her best poems are not about opera or European art. They are about the realities of working-class life in America: immigrant grandparents, Catholic parishes, accidents, sex, abortion, and the seven deadly sins. And she employs all her senses, not just visual imagery: these poems provoke uncommon sounds, textures, and odors, and are cast in lines with enjambment that creates a maximum effect. Flesh is a stunning debut.”
“Like the Victorian Cabinet of Curiosities, Analog House holds evocative treasures. This skillful collection of sonnets imbues physical objects with emotional weight. The final poem about an Underwood typewriter burns on the page.”