Precise, taut, minimalist poems are Toliver's Yellow Wallpaper, using the thud and drone of language to evoke the suffocation of a marriage gone sour, sound bouncing back, and creating patterns that are an inhibiting force in themselves. There's a pulse to her work, one that harnesses the energy on the page to transcend binaries and boundaries of the self.
"Here is a book full of careful attention to what has been called the natural world, how it begins in the poet's own body, ravels into a house, a marriage, and extends out into the continents. Like those of Bishop's mapmakers, Ashley Toliver's colors are 'more delicate than the historians.' They are also certain, meticulous, and-it must be said-just absolutely beautiful. Reading Spectra makes me f
Heather Christle, author of Heliopause
"Like hands running over a strange surface in a dark room, the language of Ashley Toliver's mesmerizing debut collection, Spectra, is constantly searching-the phrases, logics, and images coalescing only to disperse and transmogrify: 'I say to the dark / look / everything is turning / into everything else / moth shuttled inside / an empty glass / paper slid over the mouth.' In 'Housekeeping,' the l
