Formula by Reuben Ellis

Wisely instructive, always traversing new linguistic, topographical, and lyric terrain, Reuben Ellis’ Formula contains twenty-two stunning performative pieces, poems that travel into the very earth beneath our boots, even if, as the poet tells us, there is no outside to language.  Fellow reader, we are the protagonists in this pilot, in these marvelous formulae, in this beautiful and innovative volume of poetry.

–Miles Waggener, author of Superstition Freeway

Multiple influences texture Reuben Ellis’s devastating collection Formula. In “Raven Mocker” he writes, “And this is the fear that/slowly wears me down, the fear of a thing I/do not believe.” In these times when daily we experience the erosion, even the eradication of language we can trust, the narrator of these searing poems can no longer believe in the written word. And yet there is Ellis, writing in words he asks us to believe in, each leading us to the bitter beauty that remains. “The town scatters its debris for a/mile beside the interstate, . . . sterile lengths of rusted well casing/stacked on pallets, never to push into the pith/of earth.” These poems slash and burn into our hearts. After closing this collection, you’re on your own.

–Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron and the soon to be published Saint Peter and the Goldfinch