A Statistical Study of Randomness by Kendra Nuttall

 

Don’t let the title fool you. These poems are more studied than random, and the statistics are full of feeling: about personal loss (the death of her father; not speaking her mother’s Spanish), and small towns lost, and whole nation-sized social injustices. The poems here, like “America the Beautiful”—a catalog of our epidemic mass-shootings—call out, keep track, and do it well. Late in the book Kendra Nuttall writes, “I suppose we’re all socially distanced strangers / shouting into the void.” She admits, “I feel bad. / I’m having a quarter-life crisis.” But I say her poems don’t shout, they invite, and her crisis feels like our own. And her book’s got the guts and statistics to back that up.

–Rob Carney, author of Facts and Figures and The Book of Sharks

 

The random trivia nerd in me loved “A Statistical Study of Randomness” from the jump. It’s opening and closing lines at first seem like an observation in nothing, but instead, connects the reader with the everyday: the stuff we know, the stuff we don’t know, and the little stuff in between. The rest of Kendra’s poetry, sandwiched between more Randomness, tells tales of grief and loss, depression and desolation. The slices of life growing up in a small town or experiencing the world within a pandemic are beautifully expressive in their simplicity and with “America The Beautiful,” Kendra Nuttall will make you stop cold. Far from random, this is a solid collection.

–Isabella J. Mansfield, author of The Hollows of Bone

 

 

 

Interview from Utah Valley University:  https://www.uvu.edu/chss/blog/kendra-nuttall.html

 

Interview:

 http://capsulestories.com/capsule-collective-interview-kendra-nuttall/