collier nogues

“Nogues covers familiar landmarks of modern mourning: the hospital, the funeral, the awkward, belated scattering of ashes. But her poems, sentence by sentence, are much stranger, hence truer, than summary implies: She shows us quirks, ironies, bits that we cannot expect.”

“Nogues lays out her family’s pedigree of condolence: ‘I have a tourist’s love of family, of being near the more articulately faithful.// My mother was grammarian, librarian, detention master, expert teacher of remedial fiction./ My living uncles are all pastors.’ One could not ask for a more compassionate elegy.”

“Nogues counterbalances elegy with trust in plainspoken description, yielding nothing short of wisdom.... In careful lines and with a particular, wry Western twang, Nogues works her way out of mourning and back into a world of living things.”

“Collier Nogues is a rare poet in the contemporary landscape.... A poet is, among other things, a protector of thoughts, a kind of police officer of the inner world. Nogues...makes it a little safer to think, a little less frightening and lonely.”

“Nogues’ debut collection of poetry...is a necessary book, one verily worthy of its placement in the world. And regardless of the individual reader’s personal relationship with grief and grieving, it is a book that will undoubtedly ring true; one need not have endured the same experiences that On the Other Side, Blue’s speaker has in order to ascertain the volume’s credence. Simply put, Nogues is a poet that deserves to be more widely-read. She is unique to the world of contemporary letters.”