Money for Sunsets
by Elizabeth J. Cohen
"If
I were Colen’s agent, I’d pitch these poems to a movie producer as “David
Lynch meets Gertrude Stein.” Money for Sunsets, like Tender
Buttons, is syntactically rich and varied, using fragments, repetition,
and word associations. If I were Colen’s agent, I might not mention her
complicated and smart observations on women, violence, and money—since
I’m assuming that most movie producers are capitalists. In “Des Oeufs,”
Colen writes, “A naked woman as a motif is too easy.” Too easy, indeed.
Innovative and evocative, these poems have arrived at just the right
cultural moment. And I, for one, am grateful they’re here." —Denise Duhamel,
contest judge, author of Ka-Ching! and Mille
et un sentiments
"Protean like dreams, jittery montages of the quotidian-turned-nightmare, Elizabeth J. Colen’s lyrical prose poems in Money for Sunsets shed a steady gaze on our present moment, and X-ray like, expose the arthritic and bent bones of our future. This is a fierce and fearless book that reaches toward us with a sturdy and knowing sense of compassion, bearing ample evidence of the intelligence and artistry that led the poet to her revealing and mindful vision(s)." —Khaled Mattawa, author of Tocqueville and Ismailia Eclipse
"To read the poems of Elizabeth Colen is to walk the streets of a familiar town with a knife hidden against your skin, tucked tight in the waistband of your favorite jeans. Danger haunts these poems, from the “box of hair on a beach” in the very first line. Yet it is a seductive danger, and one fortified with brilliant, lucid images. Cinematic and compassionate, sexy and heartbreaking, this is a debut collection that will thrill you with the sound of your own pulse." —Mary Biddinger, author of Prairie Fever and Saint Monica
"Here are poems that speak many minds with a single voice. And most striking are those that express the living experience – more completely than any poems I know – of the long adolescent years of uncertainty-as-being. Elizabeth Colen’s ability to write from, rather than about, those years again and again results in a gift given to the reader, a kindness, even as she explores the at times fraught assumption(s) of sexual identity. As she herself writes, “Great untapped mercies live within us." — Shane McCrae, author of Mule and One Neither One
Money for Sunsets by Elizabeth J. Colen
Steel Toe Books, June 2010
$12.00, 90 pp
ISBN 9780982416938
From Steel Toe Books: http://www.steeltoebooks.com/books/64.html