The Next Country
Idra Novey
Available November 2008
In these powerful lyric poems, Novey's exploration of "country" extends beyond national boundaries into the countries of marriage and family, history and the unspoken, leading to a bold and imaginative reckoning of the self with the larger world.
"The Next Country is a choice collection of poems. Bold, immediate, uninhibited by fashions, they are very American originals. Drawn from a big landscape, they are intimate with New York and Chile, desert and river, indoors and outdoors. Novey generates the lively mental action that is the joy of true art."
—Marie Ponsot
"Big-hearted, individualistic in scope and voice, Idra Novey's The Next Country surveys a terrain that’s truly multifaceted and calibrated down to every word, every nuance. Each poem’s imagistic certainty enlarges meaning. Line by line, a playful innuendo moves us, and we find ourselves in that rugged country of the human spirit where enlightenment and surprise are twin rulers."
—Yusef Komunyakaa
about the author
Idra Novey's chapbook of poems was selected by Carolyn Forche for a 2005 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems have also appeared in Slate, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Agni. She received a PEN Translation Fund Award for her translation of The Clean Shirt of It, by Brazilian poet Paulo Henriques Britto (BOA Editions, 2007, Lannan Translation Series). She currently teaches at Columbia University and in the Bard College Prison Initiative.
Author photo by Adam Copeland
