Novel Pictorial Noise by Noah Eli Gordon Harper Perennial, 2007

These are poems concerned with creation, with music and art and language and form. There’s a playfulness to them, sometimes, with flip phrasing, end-of-poem rhymes, word-play. The paragraph-poem that starts with “A photograph” is perhaps my favorite: “A photograph. A photograph admits. A photograph admits space. A photograph admits space around its subject. A photograph admits space around its subject’s a way to feel contained.” (35) This poem goes on to play with admission, admission as letting-in and as confession, and it’s exceedingly satisfying.