Angles of Approach
Angles of Approach
by Holly Iglesias
Angles of Approach examines how history has had its way with the poet, and how she responds in kind. On levels high and low, Iglesias swoops through great stretches of time with a mix of wit and indignation, longing and angst, always attentive to the play—and suppression—of speech.
Divided into three sections—Nostalgia, Menace, and Confession—the collection presents a raucous gladhanding of historical figures and events by linking the unlikely: Vatican radio and Geiger counters, addled saints and Ranch Dressing, jingles and manifestos, bubonic plague and Schwinn bicycles. Following up on her critical study, Boxing Inside the Box: Women's Prose Poetry, Iglesias does battle in Angles of Approach with containment and contentment alike.
About the Author
Holly Iglesias is the author of Souvenirs of a Sunken World (Kore Press, 2008), Angles of Approach (White Pine Press, 2010), and Sleeping Things (Press 53, 2018) as well as a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry (Quale Press, 2004). She has taught at University of North Carolina-Asheville and University of Miami, focusing on documentary and archival poetry, and translated the work of Cuban poet, Caridad Atencio. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Cultural Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Accolades
“It’s unusual to call a book of poetry a ‘page turner,’ but this collection, with the knocking and jostling of words that mark the peculiar rhythm and appeal of the prose poem, is just that. Holly Iglesias has an uncanny ability to capture whole sweeps of history in a few lines, while her eye and ear for the quotidian result in the characters pulling us from one remarkable incident to another as if they had physically taken us by the elbow, whispering urgently. Here is nostalgia without sentimentality, menace without despair, confession without bathos.”
“The cumulative effect of Holly Iglesias’ gorgeous prose poems in Angles of Approach is both hypnotic and disturbing. She is witness and actor alike, a citizen of American soil both running from and caught deep in its grand mistakes and its sharp-edged minutiae. There is humor to keep us from despair, and there is a dark vision that begs questions. Iglesias, as a lover of history and a chronicler of its shared and intimate details, pronounces no judgments with her trim elegies. She simply renders them musical and faultless, places them side by side, and invites us to listen.”
