Soul in Space

Illuminated, feral, Kocot’s creativity engenders an excitement comparable to being twelve years old, exposed to good poetry or music or art for the first time… . One can’t help but to be unsteady, but believe in that instability… . She leaves us hanging in the best way: always about to fall, always about to be saved. -Nick Sturm, Coldfront

Characterized by an utter irreducibility, Noelle Kocot’s poetry displays an elemental movement of thinking and suggests a poetics of vision. -Jean-Paul Pecqueur, Rain Taxi

Noelle Kocot’s poetry resets hierarchies in favor of a world outside of time or telescope. Soul in Space is a masterful combination of Kocot’s intimacy and authority over poetic form, and leaves a brighter and weirder world in its wake.

But now, back to our story,

It has coffee in it, a naked river. Blessed are we who rapture

An electric wire, blessed be The falling things about our faces,

Blessed is the socket of an eye That lights the body, because

In the end, in the very end, it’s Just you. You and you. And you.

Noelle Kocot is the author of six collections of poetry. Her work has been featured in The Best American Poetry (2012 and 2013) and in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (edited by Paul Hoover). She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Fund for Poetry, and the American Poetry Review. She lives in New Jersey.