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The Forms of Discomfort by Laurel Kallen

$14.00

 

“I know I have created / as many knots in / my life as I’ve undone,” writes Laurel Kallen in a brave collection of beautifully-crafted poems that give voice to necessary wisdoms and formidable truths, no matter how difficult to bear. Kallen is a contemplative poet whose range is exhilaratingly wide and whose eyes are open to the transience of empirical and spiritual experience, which she captures vividly with both philosophical calm and graceful rapture. Her poems are simultaneously delicate and robust as she delves deeply and freshly into universal questions about the worlds around her and her place in them.

–Yerra Sugarman, winner of the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Poetry Award for Forms of Gone.


Laurel Kallen’s voice is socially aware and personally attuned. She knows “something is wrong with the sunlight/ and it is our fault,” but she also knows how to untie knots and ask for forgiveness. The language throughout these poems clearly catches states of mind and modestly exposes many “forms of discomfort” along with the joys of reconciliation and love.

–Barry Wallenstein, author of Drastic Dislocations: New and Selected Poems

 

With great dexterity of form and precision of feeling, Laurel Kallen writes from “a kind/of mind you grow into” about the identities, intricacies, and legacies of being a daughter, a mother, a partner, a woman. Wise and witty, her poems offer deep delight.

–David Groff, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, for Theory of Devolution

Rating: *****  [5 of 5 Stars!]

 

 

The Forms of Discomfort

by Laurel Kallen

$14, paper

Laurel Kallen is a poet and fiction writer who teaches at the City University of New York. She is the recipient of the 2009 Stark Short Fiction Award and the Teacher/Writer Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Global City Review, Legal Studies Forum, Scapegoat Review, La Petite Zine, Atlanta Review, Big Bridge, Portland Review and Devil’s Lake. The Forms of Discomfort, a collection of poetry, will be published by Finishing Line Press in Summer 2012 Laurel has been a featured reader at Perch Café, Cornelia Street Cafe and The CUNY Graduate Center. She has reviewed poetry for American Book Review, Pleiades, and Big City Lit. Laurel was a speechwriter for former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York and an MA in French from UC Berkeley. She is an attorney admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey. Her daughters, Maia and Chloe, are gradually coming to terms with their mother’s presence on Facebook.

Rating: *****  [5 of 5 Stars!]

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