Rumor: Poems(Triquarterly Books)

In ""Rumor"", her third collection of poems, Pimone Triplett summons diverse Eastern and Western influences to reckon the public and private costs of the overwhelming glut of 'intelligence', or information, that we face in contemporary life. Triplett relays the voices, both personal and distant, that too often are only partially heard. The most difficult realities of family life are chronicled in ""Family Spirits, with Voice of One Child Miscarried,"" in which Triplett uses free verse that incorporates the traditional Thai verse form of khap yanii. Over the course of the book, she explores how a child grows from a hint, a rumor, to a full force of intelligence and knowing. ""Motherland"" and ""Last Wave"" amplify voices, respectively, of exploited children in the brutal Thai sex trade and the victims in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The fragmentary nature of rumor, whether in the form of tabloid gossip or in the spread of partial knowledge, has consequence on a personal and even a world historical scale in Triplett's powerful poems.

About the Author :
Pimone Triplett is an associate professor in the creative writing program at the University of Washington. She has published two books of poems, The Price of Light (2005) and Ruining the Picture (Northwestern, 1998), and coedited an anthology, Poet's Work, Poet's Play (2008). Among her awards are the Larry Levis Poetry Prize and the Hazel Hall Poetry Prize. She also teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Review :
"Like the classic game of telephone, Rumor spreads and morphs, is endlessly generative and surprising. The network of these synapses, the central nervous system of this poetry, is both intricate and beautiful...Pimone Triplett's intensely beautiful language flays us open. This is a foreboding look at our innermost secrets, equally lovely and cruel." --D.A. Powell, author of Chronic "Pimone Triplett's ambitious third collection, Rumor, is marvelous. This profound volume is made up of elegantly fractured lyric forms that veer from dramatic monologue to collaged meditations on the destructive effects of trade and tourism on national identity, lineage and motherhood, and history as an evolution of snagged rumors or 'gossip turned into gospel.' Triplett has written a thrilling and haunting collection, full of mesmerizing insights on history and mythmaking." --Cathy Park Hong, author of Dance Dance Revolution "Through the chaos of warfare, natural disaster, slavery, and poverty, Rumor issues its poems to the students who 'can't take much more of God's ways justified to anyone.' This is a brutal collection and the sublime violence of bearing a child into the havoc of the twenty-first century becomes emblematic, in these stunning, audacious poems, of our ability to bear anything. The endurance of humanity, despite itself, is what's at stake here, and as we gaze at the mess of the modern world, as if being led through circles of familiar hell, we feel that we are ultimately tourists in a society that we can never fully comprehend." --Robyn Schiff, author of Revolver