Cocklebur

Praise for Erin Belieu

“Though these poems are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, it’s the groaners and knee-slappers—poignant for never quite landing—that distinguish Belieu’s style.“—The New Yorker

“There is a wild wisdom here, an artfully composed spiritual/sexual restlessness. Everywhere in these poems, beneath their wry intelligence and tender humor, we stand in the dark undercurrent of the caught breath.“—David St. John

“Here are freshness and art. Erin Belieu’s writing about gender, love, history encompasses many kinds of awareness—of feminist issues, of poetic conventions, of street-talk, of ideas—materials that she manages with her own characteristic ebullience, a poetic intelligence…a distinctive new voice, outpacing expectations.“—Robert Pinsky

Born in Nebraska, Erin Belieu earned an MA from Boston University and an MFA from Ohio State University. Belieu’s work focuses on gender, love, and history, filtering wide-ranging subject matter through a variety of theoretical frameworks. She often addresses feminist issues and uses poetic conventions and street talk.

Belieu is the author of many books of poetry, including:

• Come-Hither Honeycomb (2020)
• Slant Six (2014)
• Black Box (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
• One Above, One Below (2000)
• Infanta (1995), selected by Hayden Carruth for the National Poetry Series

Belieu coedited, with Susan Aizenberg, the anthology The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (2001).

Book critic Dwight Garner in the New York Times says, “Belieu is a poet who can’t abide pretension,” and “She’s a comedian of the human spirit, in league with poets from Frank O’Hara, to Deborah Garrison, to Tony Hoagland.”