The Declarable Future

The poems in this book inhabit a world uneasily familiar and promising, but from the distance of a few possibilities into the future. In this collection of sharp, hallucinatory, and often darkly humorous poems, a lost man wanders among the towns of people who can't remember what they named the children, how to find each other's porches, or whether their buildings are still intact. That's why they need the person with the loupe. Among the poems where doorknobs emit the daily news, stone angels fall from the sky, and the floating world's harvest is whatever swims too close, the person with the loupe steadfastly verifies only what can be measured, while the lost man is witness to the unquantifiable and the limitless. And throughout, precise and observant language leads us expertly into the gorgeous, precarious wilderness of The Declarable Future.

About the Author :
Jennifer Boyden's first book, The Mouths of Grazing Things, won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 2010. Her work has appeared in Folio, Orion, Gettysburg Review, and The Beloit Poetry Journal, among others.

Review :
"The Declarable Future interrogates rather than placates, and in doing so, the book ultimately values wonder over certainty. If readers are able to suspend their disbelief . . . they will be rewarded with a book that encourages them to reconnect with others in the face of uncertainty."--Orion Magazine "The Declarable Future makes large claims for poetry itself as a vital cultural force for navigating our way out of the dangerous straits of the postmodern condition. . . . Boyden's poems, with their gorgeous language, their parabolic narratives and bold associative leaps, are 'thinking poems.'"--Headlandia "Boyden's inventive details and rich imagery establish an honesty and tenderness that persistently seeks--and often achieves--moments of connection. It's this tender, but sharp voice that gives dignity to suffering and ultimately makes this book so accessible and compelling."--Ploughshares Literary Magazine "It seems fair to call The Declarable Future . . . an amazing book, the kind of book that must be read, not just by other poets but by everyone. . . . It is the sort of poetry that reminds us that language is vital and that we can and should use words to investigate what it means to be a human citizen of the world."--The Rumpus "From the crystal doorknob transmitters that open The Declarable Future to the last will of the lost man that closes it, I was utterly captivated by the power of Jennifer Boyden's parallel world--a timely, disquieting parable for the broken one in which we live. Her lost man, like Z. Herbert's Mr. Cogito, becomes an alter ego who inhabits and interprets our current predicament. Her colloquial language is lucid, metaphorically inventive, constantly surprising--a rare blend of the piquant and the quietly tragic."--Eleanor Wilner, Warren Wilson College "Here recent scientific breakthroughs collide with intimate family life, ethereality with the quotidian, and, when we least expect it, the theoretical plane drops off suddenly into the abyss of the too, too real. In these poems of pith and sizzle, 'Love [is] finding fleas in the fur of our sisters.' Sisters, you may believe it."--Nance Van Winckel, author of No Starling "I can't remember a recent book so inhabited by a spirit of unease about where we find ourselves now. 'Always in search of the voices, ' she writes, and I can feel Jennifer Boyden probing for a way to give shape, less to a catalog of our social and spiritual predicaments than the mood of our times. This is a wise book by a talented poet."--Bob Hicok, author of The Legend of Light