Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. With a startling and often musical use of language, Anstett handles the grotesque and the graceful alike with the energetic logic of the body--one of physicality, circulation, and surprise. "Aaron Anstett has a unique talent for dislocating language into meaning, and he accomplishes this most often through the body's exhaustive task of flesh, though 'beyond it's umpteen miseries, / enduring uproar in our skins so keen / it cannot be rendered, what we a capella say / all vowel and glottal stop.' His raised voice is far-reaching and memorable." Anstett's other collections are Sustenance (1998 Colorado Book Award Finalist) and No Accident (winner of the 2006 Nebraska Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize).
About the Author
Aaron Anstett's collection Sustenance was the finalist for the 1998 Colorado Book Award in Poetry. His second collection, No Accident, was selected by Philip Levine for the 2004 Backwaters Press Prize and won the 2006 Nebraska Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. A new collection, Each Place the Body's, was published in 2007 by Ghost Road Press. His poems have appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Black Warrior Review, Indiana Review, The Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, River City, and Shenandoah among many other journals, and he has been featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. Anstett has run an open-mike series for a number of years and often organizes readings. Recently he has taught Creative Writing at the University of Colorado-Pueblo. He lives in Southern Colorado with his children.