Overview

SLAG as in waste product. Slag as in misogynistic invective. Either use unites the speakers in Aimee Noel's first poetry collection. From bodies of workers broken to bodies of those attacked to bodies of water abused, Noel holds the beauty and danger of the moment in balance. Incorporating research, interviews, memories and myth, Slag weaves a world of those who persist, even thrive, though their environment, both internal and external, may not have their best interests at heart.

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9781962405409

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Reviews

""Here we are, at the edge of Slag, every one of us as nervy and bright as the speakers in this extraordinary debut collection from Aimee Noel. Through keen observation and skill, this world ""becomes blue, cracks itself/like glass, tumbles over sand until/edges disappear. It emerges a gem."" Not since Phil Levine have we had poems sing with such pride and grit of the stuff of work, the formation and dissipation of towns and identity around industry. This poet's voice is a vital archive of a time when nearly all work was embodied; it and she are inexorable, and that's exactly what we need them to be. "" July Westhale, author of Via Negativa and moon moon SLAG brings working-class Buffalo and the rust belt as close as the next bar stool. Aimee Noel's poems chronicle the generational consequences of steel dust, wartime uranium processing, escalating violence, but also the bonds between a daughter and her father, a driver in a blizzard and the driver ahead. Noel's steel is tempered by tenderness. Slag is a harshly honest, insightful, moving portrait of a struggling America. Kathleen Flenniken, former Washington Poet Laureate and author of Post Romantic and Plume These gritty poems avoid the trap of blue collar clichés by offering readers empathetic, scrupulously observed, but unsentimental portraits of family, friends and neighbors: ""bodies bent by heavy metals/and the weight of limited options."" Framed in crafted lines and stanzas, Noel's voice can be tough or tender; when required, she invests difficult subject matter with a formal inventiveness that is both refreshing and satisfying. Slag never disappoints. Mark Pawlak, author of Away Away

Author Information

Aimee Noel has twice been awarded the Ohio Art Council's Individual Excellence Award for poetry and was an OAC Fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center. Her poems are published in journals such as Ecotone, Witness, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Founding editor of Sheila-Na-Gig Editions

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