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November
2007
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Praise for A Gringo Like Me In this striking, idiosyncratic first book, Jennifer Knox speaks from a deep immersion in American popular culture, both relishing the kitsch and clutter that surrounds us and seeing through it to a terrifying core. If Jeff Koons and R. Crumb collaborated on a book of poems, it might look something like this. —Mark Doty Jennifer L. Knox’s poems are sexy, surprising and funny, and they give fresh proof that (in Blake’s words) exuberance is beauty. —David Lehman These poems are sharp in perceptive insight, with an ability to use narrative, image and felt-life together in one purposeful whole. This is a real strength, hard to describe but readily perceived. Knox’s range of tones is wide; she can move a reader to reflection, or empathy, or discovery, or even, at will and blessedly, to laughter. I’ve not ever met an imagination quite like hers—even when preposterous, without aggression, and inventive without whimsy. —Marie Ponsot “In her first go, this poet has given us one ‘hot ass book ass’ to admire for a good long time.” —Southeast Review “Knox’s first book, A Gringo Like Me, reads more like Richard Pryor with a MFA. But for all the blue humor, there’s real craft on display…. Knox has the ability to take a ridiculous situation and tell it in such a way that it seems real…. [She] doesn’t back off, doesn’t blink.” —Verse “Because she makes it look so easy, it’s easy for the casual reader to ignore the strength and grace in the lines of Jennifer L. Knox’s A Gringo Like Me, as she carries us from one fresh image to the next. By the second read, it grows clear that a deep understanding of form and prosody underlies what are crafted to resemble poems of loose spontaneity.” —The Columbia Journal of American Studies “Only a couple of times a year do I truly get excited about a book of poetry. Jennifer L. Knox’s A Gringo Like Me is one of these rare gems. While reading it I kept thinking, I can’t believe this is poetry.” —Powells.com |
A
Gringo Like Me
Jennifer
L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California—where absolutely
anything can be made into a bong. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies
The Best American Poetry (1997, 2003 and 2006), Great American
Prose Poems: From Poe to Present, Free Radicals: American Poets Before
Their First Books, and The Best American Erotic Poems: From
1800 to the Present. She has taught poetry writing at New York
University and Hunter College, and is available for children’s
parties, séances, and tradeshow booth demonstrations. For even
more specious information, see