The Northway (Terrapin Poetry) / Bellamy, Lisa

This hilarious, imaginative book packs cigarette butts, Buddhist prayer flags, a spastic colon, Leviathan jaws, and gnats reincarnating as neonatal nurses into just one poem. Others say "Yes, to grunts and drooling"; find a Zen master in a bobcat spotted while driving; and experience an epiphany while driving with closed eyes. Bellamy's humor is a lens exposing our foibles, fears, and loveliness. Her unstinting, self-implicating humor skewers culture, "I eat only fresh, locally sourced sadness," and politics, religion, gender roles, and relationships, "swinging [her] axe at the root of delusion."
--April Ossmann, Event Boundaries