Elaine Equi

In the fall of 1999, Dutch painter Robert Zandvliet produced, along with master printer Maurice Sanchez, a monotype project entitled The Varick Series. Zandvliet, one of the most talented and innovative painters of his generation, specializes in landscape painting.

“We waited for Word to arrive/ like a messiah in a stagecoach/ or a sheriff riding a thundercloud.” From acclaimed poet Elaine Equi comes her latest provocatively playful collection. “Thoughtful, witty, curious” (The New York Times), Equi’s subversive voice delicately refracts human experiences from the colors of weather to the strange ways we make sense of our bodies, from the emptiness of family homes to the flow of time itself.

Award-winning poet Elaine Equi selects the poems for the 2023 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune). Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents some of the year’s most striking and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering insight into their work. For The Best American Poetry 2023 guest editor Elaine Equi, whose own work is “deft, delicate [and] subversive” (August Kleinzahler), has made astute choices representing contemporary poetry at its most dynamic. The result is an exceptionally coherent vision of American poetry today. Including valuable introductory essays contributed by the series and guest editors, the 2023 volume is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.

Award-winning poet Elaine Equi selects the poems for the 2023 edition of The Best American Poetry, "a 'best' anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune). Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been "one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world" (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents some of the year's most striking and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering insight into their work. For The Best American Poetry 2023 guest editor Elaine Equi, whose own work is "deft, delicate and] subversive" (August Kleinzahler), has made astute choices representing contemporary poetry at its most dynamic. The result is an exceptionally coherent vision of American poetry today. Including valuable introductory essays contributed by the series and guest editors, the 2023 volume is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.

Equi’s poems insist that despite the fact that most of our everyday reality has been rendered accountable and computable, there is still a region of experience that escapes our GPS-mapped consciousness—an intangible realm where poetry is still possible.

Whether celebrating clones or revising Led Zeppelin, Equi melds verse with aphorism, wisdom with wicked playfulness."-Entertainment Weekly Equi's poems are under the breath asides from your cleverest friend-witty, thoughtful, and wry. SLIGHT A slight implies if not an insult (real or imagined) at least something unpleasant -- a slight cold, a slight headache. No one ever says: "You make me slightly happy." Although this, in fact, is often the case. Widely published and anthologized, Elaine Equi's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Nation, and numerous volumes of The Best American Poetry.

“Elaine Equi’s narrow lines are like the rungs of a ladder that one ascends while one is descending them. It’s a motion like that in Wang Wei’s lines, `Stars / float up / toward dawn,’ which she quotes in her cento, `Wang Wei’s Moon.’ Or, as she beautifully puts it, `Discreetly a breeze enters the room.’”—John Ashbery Ripple Effect showcases thirty years of Elaine Equi’s investigations into our cultural obsessions. Vivid, savvy, and accessible, her poems can transform almost anything—a list, a diary entry, advertising speak—into sophisticated, germane elixirs of pop culture and high art. Widely published, these poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and numerous volumes of The Best American Poetry.

"Friend to objects, saints and dead celebrities alike, Elaine Equi is the real McCoy: a keeper of the sacred flame of language-joy. Her work re-alerts us to our earliest love of words as toys, jewels, confections. In doing so she juices up our thinking. What’s better than writing that delights as it sharpens the mind? You’ve heard of `smart drinks’ or `smart drugs,’ said to chemically boost intellect? These are truly smart poems."—Amy Gerstler, L. A. Weekly Elaine Equi is the author of many books, including Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award. Widely anthologized, her poems appear in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology and The Best American Poetry for the years 1989, 1995, and 2002. She lives in New York City.

Synthesizing twenty years of influencess, Equi constructs a collage of voices--undoubtedly American, exquisitely her own.

Subversive and witty, Equi adeptly slips around corners and peers through keyholes, ultimately proving that the best poems take us by surprise. "Exceedingly delicate work, infused with a sly and bawdy humor.... leaves the reader eager for more.... one of the most enjoyable and rewarding books of poetry."--The Nation

"Equi is that rarity--someone with natural comic talent who is also capable of delicacy and lyricism."--David Lehman, Newsday