Librería Samer Atenea
Librería Aciertas (Toledo)
Kálamo Books
Librería Perelló (Valencia)
Librería Elías (Asturias)
Donde los libros
Librería Kolima (Madrid)
Librería Proteo (Málaga)
'Everything abandoned comes alive' Pamela Yenser writes in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS Down Home, which becomes an invocation for resilience in a world filled with disaster at every turn: whether it’s the wreckage of flying saucers in Roswell, or a brother and a mother who are irrevocably changed after a complicated birth, or an abusive father who is always in the driver’s seat-whether it’s by plane or car. Yenser does the difficult work of reckoning with trauma and the 'family / history slamming the lid on truth.' And though there’s comfort in escape, and beauty to be found in the landscapes these poems traverse in a wide range of traditional and open poetic forms, Yenser reminds us 'As long as you live / you won’t forget,' and there’s danger everywhere. Lucky for us, we have a wonderful guide who knows her way around language and line, and is cunning enough to 'have razor blades sewn / into the hem of every poem.' -Gary JacksonPamela Yenser is a learned poet who knows the context, history, and texts of literature. Here she uses her supple and strict prosody to tell a family story about an abusive, daredevil father, a denying-praying mother, her 'little retarded brother' ('She is her brother’s keeper') and more. In airplanes and Airstream trailers 'one catastrophe after another' happens to mark a childhood where 'Visions of the devil / made you tithe, trade in the family silver.' This astonishing chapbook delivers one revelation after another in poems exquisitely structured: 'The past is a trap the Jaws of Life / can’t break,' she writes, '... but isn’t this the work a poet is meant to do?' One poem in exact rhyming couplets is called 'In the Garden of Demented Parents.' Another, also in couplets, ends: 'Look! I have razor blades sewn / into the hem of every poem.' Read this brilliant and triumphant chapbook by a poet who limns the tragedy and triumph of her life. -Hilda RazPamela Yenser’s brave and tender poems spin together family history, personal resilience, and imaginative perseverance 'sharp as that wreckage/ strewn like tinsel on glitter-/fields of tumbled rock' (as she writes in the title poem). Encompassing everything from a 'bad weather balloon made of Kryptonite' to 'a pineapple/ ruffled doily,' Yenser juxtaposes the images and dreams of the otherworldly and the day-to-day life while also writing deeply of love and survival, monsters and angels, magic tricks and memories. This is a captivating and sparkling collection. -Caryn Mirriam-GoldbergPamela Yenser’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS refers to, yes, the Roswell UFO, as well as family relationships that are a parallel encounter. The poems’ narrator sees the flying saucer wreckage as a four-year-old. She writes about this iconic disruption of the skies as a way to reveal the workings of memory itself. This is an exciting personal fable that blends journalism, verse, and narration. -Denise Lowe
