Drunk
by Noon
Jennifer L. Knox
November
2007
Trade Paper Original
ISBN: 978-0-6151-6355-0
80 pp. | $15.00
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Did somebody say
Jen Knox’s poems "read like Richard Pryor with an MFA"?
Yes, somebody did.* She’s also been compared to comedian Sarah
Silverman, artist Jeff Koons, a 10-year-old who can’t keep her
mouth shut, and cartoonist R. Crumb. None of these equations is
quite right, however. Jennifer L. Knox’s work is unmistakably
her own: darkly hilarious, surprisingly empathetic, utterly original.
Drunk by Noon
is the eagerly awaited sequel to Knox’s first book, A Gringo
Like Me. All three of Jennifer's books are available from Bloof. (Check out the bundle deal here.)
Jennifer
L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California—where absolutely
anything can be made into a bong. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies
The Best American Poetry (1997, 2003 and 2006), Great American
Prose Poems: From Poe to Present, Free Radicals: American Poets Before
Their First Books, and The Best American Erotic Poems: From
1800 to the Present. She has taught poetry writing at New York
University and Hunter College, and is available for children’s
parties, séances, and tradeshow booth demonstrations. For even
more specious information, see www.jenniferlknox.com.
*John
Findura in Verse.
Sample
poems from Drunk by Noon:
Four
in Coconut
One
in Blackbird
Another
in Blackbird
Three
in Kulture Vulture
A
podcast of Jennifer reading from Drunk by Noon & A
Gringo Like Me at FSU
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Praise
for Drunk by Noon
"These
are not poems to be placed on a pedestal. They are to be read and, most
importantly, enjoyed...she is doing something that captures attention,
is truly artistic, and fills a void in contemporary poetry. It is the
average people that Knox ends up speaking to...I, for one, am certainly
happy that she continues to speak, and I will definitely keep listening."
—Jacket
"Knox
continues to simultaneously pierce and please the reader...Knox's brusque
no-nonsense voice can be rough to the touch at times, tough too, but it
is always finely anchored in gorgeous language and sound-play that twists
richly through the verse...Though many tout Knox's humor as her most popular
quality, like the best technicians of comedy it is the jugular she goes
for, by way of the jocular...From a landscape of Americana with its tumbleweeds,
acid hits, red meat and f*cking, Knox's voice comes at us courageous and
stouthearted sticking her flag deep in the soil of this weird and wicked
world."
—Harriet,
the Poetry Foundation blog
"This
second book from Knox, a young New York poet, continues the playful romp
through the warped Americana she began in her debut, A Gringo Like Me.
Here, Knox gives voice to wayward teens, drug-addled sages and fat dogs
fantasizing about killing babies—among other unsavory characters—through
dramatic monologues and quick narrative sketches. [F]ascination with the
down-and-out lurks behind Knox's layers of irony and comic distance. She's
at her best and most entertaining in bursts of everyday surrealism—like
the poem 'Pastoral with Internet Porn,' which bristles with energy and
imagination."
—Publishers
Weekly
Though
Jennifer L. Knox writes with a chaotic and preternaturally inventive élan
of a disgusting world untethered from the spirit, lost and locked in its
own matrix of collective narcissistic excitement, she refuses not to love
it. She writes of little durable people and little durable dogs, all with
wide, durable spirits. What you get is the embarrassing truth that is
our world—and Knox looking at it and us for what we are: a clutter
of gorgeous, lovable kitsch. And she does so with what can only be called
satiric empathy. In fact, she is without doubt one of the most empathic
writers of recent decades. In short, she’s a freakin genius.
—Gabriel
Gudding
Jennifer L. Knox’s first book A Gringo Like Me is a rarity in that
it is almost as good as the blurbs on its back say it is, and her second
book is even better. Knox is a tragic poet, though her poems at times
seem comic. Very USA in other words. Filled with the despair of our “fallen
names” finding poignant resolutions where none exist. The characters
in Drunk by Noon are sad spasms desperate for the entertainment promised
by the photographs of empty American landscapes, and finding it after
all only in each other. For which Knox has the heart to forgive them.
Knox has a sympathetic eye for the caricatures and celebrations we USAers
use to evade the cultural horror she depicts with complicity as if she
too were not entirely innocent of it. Her poems typify and experience
our angst hypes, our hopeless flippancies. She braves to save whom, herself
or us?
—Bill
Knott
Since Knox favors premise over conclusion, her poems simply speak—they
do not explain. In this way they are not entirely unlike scripture. The
part that is unlike scripture is the one that’s like “Wait,
I was reading these poems and laughing but my hearing aid fell out and
then my face just kind of blew off in a beautiful rainbow spray of bullshit-dissolving
napalm.”
—Sarah
Manguso
Even
more praise here.
Also
Available from Bloof:
A Gringo Like Me
The Mystery of the
Hidden Driveway
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