Phantom Pains of Madness

Noelle Kocot recalls a break with reality that occurred a decade and a half ago in vivid, raw language, one word per line. The resulting slender columns are sharply focused and intense. There’s a cult following for her unique imagination, self-professed in a poem as filled with pulchritude and peopleness, and her seventh collection does not disappoint.

The Singing Language Around The Life

Noelle Kocot is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, Soul in Space (2013), The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011), and a book of translations of poems by Tristan Corbiere, Poet by Default (Wave Books, 2011). Her previous works include the discography Damon’s Room (Wave Books Pamphlet Series, 2010), Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006). She is also the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune (both from Four Way Books). Her poems were included in the Best American Poetry anthologies for 2001, 2012, and 2013, as well as in the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry 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, as well as a residency fellowship from Lannan Foundation. She is the Poet Laureate of Pemberton Borough, New Jersey.