Arm Wrestling at the Iowa State Fair by Paul Brooke

“The most powerful property of poetry is its specificity, and Paul Brooke is an artist of the specific. His new collection is populated by the tantalizingly nuanced: a “sink filled/with brightly colored fish/and peppers. The aroma/of garlic and olive oil/…like hot balloons” and “a Pinot Gris with a bit of butter.”In his journey through the ephemera of daily existence, Brooke gathers the unnoticed and brings these well-wrought treasures into a clarity that is both lovely and affecting.”

–Kyle McCord, author of Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders

“Like the word meaning ‘the wine that holds the cork of a champagne bottle,’agraffe, Paul Brooke’s imagination, word play and artistry using 382 unusual words is astonishing. What a linguistic gem! After reading this book, reading a dictionary should become in style, again! These words and their meanings explode on the page, so that we’re left with a sweet, bubbly taste on our tongues.”

–Biljana Obradovic, author of Little Disruptions

“This book is everything! The whole world is in it, an ecumene, and Brooke, the poet-cartographer maps it out through language and the relationships between words, words which at first sight befuddle the reader, but just trust his instincts and follow his meticulously plotted path and you will find discoveries of what lies behind the words and what deep sorrow and joy they represent of our foolish and sacred lives. The world of this book is populated with misfits, drunken sailors, a fatherless chef, the bully of the gym, lion tamers, contortionists, vagabonds, derelicts, wrestlers at the State Fair, the kind of flailing, lost soul who “covers his tattoos with tattoos” and yet Brooke embodies the vision of a blind prophet. The world is dense with language, we may have once felt barred from comprehending, words that confront us with our own lack of knowledge, curiosity, and imagination. What is limacine, perculsion, gaberlunzie? Who is a nesiotes or a warrow? Don’t turn away.

Brooke will guide you through this atlas with all the joy of the explorer and illuminate what was there all along in the shadows, and you will see everything you’ve overlooked and the beauty you’ve been missing all along.”

–Heather Derr-Smith, author of Tongue Screw