Out of the Blank

Praise for Out of the Blank

"In her splendid continuance of cascading thinking, Elaine Equi unfolds the ordinary. Her pluckiness billows in this latest collection where solid matter morphs with edgy surprise in a poetics that speaks straight to us. Nobody quite knocks it out of the ballpark like Equi!" -Maureen Owen, author of Everything Turns on a Delicate Measure

"Nestled within the seductive mastery Equi displays, we find poems on time, taking stock, emotions, dreams, commonality. There are regrets conveyed with a sense of humor. There's music, even Lorca's guitar. The mood is almost unnoticeably quieter. "Sepia light/seeps / into everything." Delight in this superb collection." -Vincent Katz, author of Broadway for Paul

"I have always marveled at Elaine Equi's poems. She does more with fewer words than any other poet I know. And yet, I would not call her a minimalist, but a maximalist, who writes with graceful humor and leads us gently into the dark and haunted places in our thinking." -John Yau, author of Tell It Slant

Past Praise:

Praise for The Intangibles

Finalist for the 2019 Big Other Book Award in Poetry
Hyperallergic, "Favorite Poetry Collections of 2019"

"Always count on Elaine Equi's nimble gymnastics to flip the ordinary around and create something rich and strange . . . These poems do not wear their brooding hearts on their sleeves but rather flirt and banter, drawing us close before revealing their ruminative complexities." -Albert Mobilio, Hyperallergic

"This is a book for now and for the future, a panacea and antidote to the fear of the inane unknown. Equi's elegant control of line, image, percolating observation is always a taut surprise. I feel better already. Inside these subtle poems, complete little universes, there's never a dull moment." -Anne Waldman, author of Bard, Kinetic

Praise for Elaine Equi

"Whether celebrating clones or revising Led Zeppelin, Equi melds verse with aphorism, wisdom with wicked playfulness." -Entertainment Weekly

"These poems, brief as they sometimes are, simply-stated as they almost always are, open up a ground, a web, of the conscious and subconscious dailiness we all experience but rarely self-examine or seek to understand." -New York Journal of Books

"There is a lot of fake poetry out there. Equi is real. She changes the way you look at things. You cannot fake the authenticity that informs even the most casual of her observations." -David Lehman, founder and series editor of The Best American Poetry