Sometimes, the deepest things are enclosed in smallest packages; Lobster Rolls, a leg cast, a quotation from a beloved, but departed poet; the trick of poetry and the challenge to the poet is to turn the ordinary and make it blaze new in our mind, and this is a task Estha Weiner is more than up to in her fine book at the last minute. We read what she gathers for us here, and go, “yeah—that’s it. That’s the way we are.”
Cornelius Eady
And for Estha Weiner's previous book, In the Weather of the World
Estha Weiner writes poems that look effortless, yet their premise can change with every line, every syllable, like sonnets so honed as to be all volta. Erich Auerbach wrote that Dante discovered how to write about events, not just feelings. Weiner's poems are events themselves, contained whirlwinds; they can turn--as in “At the American Burger” – against the authorial stance. In the Weather of the World is disciplined, volatile, subversive. It’s a thrill to watch Weiner’s lens zoom into an unassuming moment of daily life, inhabit it, and disclose the vast, strangely unexplored territories of contemporary history.
D. Nurkse