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The
Cloud of Knowable Things
Reviews
Bookslut:
"A joyful dip into the playground of language, where words joust amicably . . . [Equi] explores the way the worlds of words and humanity intersect and drive each other."
American Book Review:
"Equi's crowning achievement in The Cloud of Knowable Things is to dissolve the distinction not between subject and object, but between reader and writer, artist and audience."
LA Weekly:
"Friend to objects, saints and dead celebrities alike, Elaine Equi is the real McCoy: a keeper of the sacred flame of language-joy. Her work re-alerts us to our earliest love of words as toys, jewels, confections. In doing so she juices up our thinking. What better than writing that delights as it sharpens the mind? You've heard of 'smart drinks' or 'smart drugs,' said to chemically boost the intellect? [Hers] are truly smart poems."
Detroit Metro Times:
"Some of [Equi's] poems are bright snapshots or whispers as plain and personal as journal entries or a conversation with a close friend. Then the form changes to kaleidoscopic dreamscapes, tiny haiku-ish thoughts or beautiful lists of things. . . . Equi's venture feels personal, raw, fully engaged, as natural and necessary as breathing. Like being without having to explain."
Publishers Weekly:
"Ranging in subject from the metaphysical woes of consumer culture to the attractions of silence and 'The Seven Veils of Spring,' Equi combines two virtues that don't normally go together. On the one hand, this book contains short, witty, easily understood poems about shoes, hair and shopping; on the other, the poems explore, with care and wariness, the language we use to talk about them . . . Like Ann Lauterbach, Equi is a post-New York School woman writer whose work is due for evaluation on its own merits, rather than comparisons with forebears."
Library Journal:
"Equi looks outward, connecting everyday things—intersecting streets, lists, furniture, diaries—to herself . . . achieving a Zen-like effect that seems simple but contains depth."
Three Candles:
"Deceptively simple, but brilliant."
Midwest Book Review:
"Minutia and grand unknowable designs combine in a cavalcade of lilting syllables."
Splendid:
"With the graceful, easy-on-the-ear glories in her Cloud of Knowable Things, Equi has enriched our tongue."
Rain Taxi Review of Books:
"Equi's serious side appears in relation to her obsession with objects—objects in Japanese novels, objects in Beckett, 'Bad Objects.' Many of these poems are elegies for the underappreciated junk of our throwaway culture."
Minnesota Literature:
"Equi's poems sparkle with radiant images written in clean, spare lines."
Court Green:
"The virtue of Elaine Equi's poems, what makes them original and sometimes even great, is her ability to combine an almost chatty line with an image that is never predictable and often subtly complex. . . . The title of the book itself—cloud=vague, knowable=empirically verifiable—is one more paradox on the pile."
Moby Lives:
"An excellent introduction to Equi for those unfamiliar with her work—this newest collection of her poetry puts on generous display her playfulness and suppleness with a wide variety of forms."
New Pages:
"Equi says she asks herself 'why not have it all?'—in this book, it seems that, in fact, she does."
Robert Creeley:
"These deceptively forthright poems prove fabliaux of unique kind. Their collective story is not only that of this rare and accomplished poet, but of the echoing life we share with her and see here, through her immaculate eye, with wistful and enduring clarity."
Fanny Howe:
"I think of Elaine Equi as Hans Christian Andersen wandering around what is now New York. She (and he) are witness to the little things that pass like clouds or are dropped, forgotten, too fragile to stay for long. 'A cloud-bruise/ pressed between/ pages of glass.' Puffs blown into being for a second. Do things search for their Platonic form as soon as they are gone? Are they trailed, as they are in these poems, by heart? I don't know, because these poems are Very Spirit."
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