Hat on a Pond

by Dara Wier

Dara Wier’s poems call to mind "the philosophical comedy of Wallace Stevens and Wislawa Szymborska . . . [and] draw a reader away from a recognizable world into one in which women waltz with bears, houseflies chat with colonels, and the absence of sound makes a material presence."— Harvard Review

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2001

About the author

Dara Wier's books include You Good Thing (Wave Books 2013), Selected Poems (Wave Books 2011), Remnants of Hannah (Wave Books 2006), Hat On a Pond (Verse Press 2002), and Voyages in English (Carnegie Mellon 2001). Reverse Rapture (Verse Press 2005), a book length poem in nine-line stanzas in nine-stanza pieces, was selected by Stephen Rodefer for the 2006 Poetry Center Book Award from The American Poetry Archives. Among her works are the limited editions A Civilian's Journal of the War Years (Song Cave), (X In Fix) in Rain Taxi's Brainstorm Series, Fly on the Wall (Oat City Press), and The Lost Epic, co-written with James Tate (Waiting for Godot Books in 1999). Her work has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the American Poetry Review. In 2005 she was the Rubin Distinguished Chairholder at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Her work has appears in American Letters & Commentary, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Fou, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, jubilat, Maggy, Make, Matter, New American Writing, slope, Volt, Norton's Hybrid Poetry, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and elsewhere. She directs the MFA program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-directs the University of Massachusetts' Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action and The Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Her editing work includes publishing limited edition chapbooks and broadsides with Factory Hollow Press, a part of Flying Object, an arts non-profit in Hadley, Massachusetts. Audio, interviews, and reviews can be found in a website section about Wier's work at Wave Books. Read "A Stick, A Cup, A Bowl, A Comb," in Poetry Daily, "Peach Farm," in Jubilat, and more poems on poetserv.org.. Her monthly column, Inside Undivided, about chance, fate, intention & context is at Flying Object's site.


For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/47-...

Reviews

[w3rmo · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is amazing!!! took a few poems for me to get the gambit, starts off just feeling like a series of list poems, but they accumulate into a whole greater than the sum of the parts, a kind of gestalt motion that offers immense pleasure in reading. my fav poem might be “inside job” bc im 100000% sure it foretold 9-11

[Laura Desiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weir’s poems do not operate in our reality, yet as you travel further into the poetic landscapes in Hat on A Pond you start to sense a new reality in her surprising, abstract language. She makes her own rules and then breaks them. A master at repetition and imagery, her dream-like poems are a rabbit hole I can’t wait to fall into.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems that leave you hanging.