10 Poets among Kansas City Star top 100 books of 2012

Poets selected for the KC Star top 100 books include Julianne Buchsbaum, Heid Erdrich, Jack Gilbert, Lucille Clifton, Albert Goldbarth, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Natasha Trethewey, and Mary Jo Bang (translation of Dante's Inferno). Poets with nonfiction books that are in the list are Kevin Young (The Grey Album) and Gerald Stern (Stealing History).

I was honored to be one of 17 curators for this "best-of" list, edited by Steve Paul of the KC Star. You will see the KC-area and national perspectives represented in fiction, non-fiction, mystery, poetry, and young readers. See more details:

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/29/v-print/3940050/the-stars-top-100-books-of-2012.html

Review of Hadara Bar-Nadav's new book THE FRAME CALLED RUIN

Hadara Bar-Nadav, director of creative writing at University of Missouri-Kansas City, is on a roll with this book, her first one A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie Book Prize), and the next book, Lullaby (with Exit Sign), winner of the 2012 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize for 2012. Recently she read at the Raven Bookstore Big Tent reading, Oct. 25, and I heard her voice in person--energizing the verse. She mentioned her poodle, which I was not able to work into the review, although I wanted to--indeed a poodle is a sub-motif. My review of The Frame Called Ruin, "Rewriting the Rules of Poetry," looks at poetic structures as formulae, perhaps a stretch (see what you think?), but it gave me an entry point into the work:
"Mathematicians posit infinite dimensional spaces that can be plotted with numbers. In her second full collection of poetry, The Frame Called Ruin, Hadara Bar-Nadav explores word-based worlds beyond the read of traditional verse." For the entire review, go to: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/09/3907123/rewriting-the-rules-of-poetry.html