Kirjahaku

Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry Honorable Mention The title poem of this collection refers to the phantom island of Antillia, included on maps in the fifteenth century but later found not to exist. The ghosts that haunt this collection are phantom islands, moon lakes, lasers used to clean the caryatids at the Acropolis, earlier versions of the self, suicides, a madam from the Old West, petroleum, snapdragons, pets, ice apples, Casper, and a “resident ghost” who makes the domestic realm of “the cradle and the bed” uninhabitable. The ghosts are sons, fathers “asleep in front of the TV,” and a variety of exes-“lost boys” with names like The Texan and Mr. No More Cowboy Hat whom Henrietta Goodman treats with snarky wit but also with grief, guilt, and love. Although memories pervade this collection, these poems also look forward and outward into a world where social inequality and environmental disaster meet the possibility of metamorphosis.

Stunningly musical and stylistically varied, the poems in Hungry Moon have the effect of a flyover view of terrain pocked with domestic and social unease. The reconnaissance we receive -- red stuffing spilling out of a childs cheek torn by a dog; a cello cases lining exposed like a body split down the middle -- makes us think there is no safe place to land. But Goodman is expert at steering our gaze to identify landmarks in the natural world to bring us safely down; these sonically rich and surprising poems are lessons in perception, obliging us to look at the world from a distance and then up close, touch what is in front of us, like a stone from a rockslide -- I pick one up, / hold my hand over the black draft, then put it back -- to learn from, and move on. -- Curtis Bauer. Contributions by Center for Literary Publishing, Colorado State University