Beautiful in the Mouth - by Keetje Kuipers (Paperback)

About the Book

Selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the eighth annual A. Poulin, Jr., Poetry Prize.

Book Synopsis

Selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the eighth annual A. Poulin, Jr., Poetry Prize.

Review Quotes

"The poems in Beautiful in the Mouth mostly identify themselves within a poetic register that is more tangible, emotionally sincere, linguistically straightforward and sensuous than that of the experimental lyric... Kuipers' is a poetry that demonstrates how instabilities in the contested space between lyric and narrative conventions can yield poems that teeter and slip between location and dislocation, language and silence, past and present, presence and absence." - Tar River Poetry

"The place of her poems... is truly the embodied experience in the larger world. She douses us in imagery that we can voice in our mouths and feel under our fingers." -- Midtown Review

"I have no reservations at all with Beautiful in the Mouth or the poet behind it: if my praise seems even too encouraging for an unbiased review, just know that this is possibly the best book of original poetry that I've encountered since I first began reviewing books in 1998. Perhaps it is because Kuipers as a poet is much like myself in her foci of intimate affairs and broad natural landscapes, or perhaps it is because she is so skillful in crafting poems that tell stories or minister to our emotions honestly and she can do so with an impressive economy of words. She has simply impressed me... [h]ow she did this exactly, I cannot quite place into words." -- CutBank Literary Magazine

"Never before have I read a collection of poetry in which nearly every poem echoes my own thoughts and misgivings on what it means to be a woman, to be in or out of love, to grapple with mortality, to finally embrace the volatile nature o f the self, or to deal with 'the consequences/ of happiness.' This is an intruiging collection that deserves your heart's attention. I fell in love. I hope you do too." -- American Microreviews and Interviews

About the Author

Keetje Kuipers is a native of the Northwest. She earned her B.A. at Swarthmore College and her M.F.A. at the University of Oregon. She is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2007 Keetje was the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. She used the residency to complete work on her book Beautiful in the Mouth, which was awarded the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

In addition, Keetje has been the recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Oregon Literary Arts, and Soapstone, as well as awards from Atlanta Review and Nimrod. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, West Branch, Painted Bride Quarterly, Willow Springs, and AGNI, among others. Keetje Kuipers lives in Missoula, Montana with her dog, Bishop.