Monday, April 16, 2012

Independent publisher Magic Helicopter Press has recently released Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Jordan Stempleman’s newest collection of poetry No, Not Today.

Poet Heather Christle writes about the collection, "With affectionate and funny familiarity, No, Not Today records the thinking that shapes days from within. Anxieties assert themselves, love insists on appearing, and meanwhile time and how we name it cycle onward. It’s like Jordan Stempleman himself decided to ‘each morning / wake up, look out at the world and sign hooray.’”

You wake up with your hopes for sprinklers that don't cost too much. Then you start your walking and thinking of what the first moonwalk cost us. There's the us, yes, whomever in your life you want to take over your long standing nights. You and the day and the us and the thinking all start together, and No, Not Today starts there over and over. Wise out of the side of the mouth, funny and pillow talking, these are daily delvings "clearly intimate and at home / in the country," impressed and terrified by the consistency of life and love. 

Jordan Stempleman was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1977. He co-edits The Continental Review, teaches writing and literature at the Kansas City Art Institute, and curates A Common Sense Reading Series.