Denise Duhamel is one of my favorite poets and one of the most captivating, comforting, challenging writers I have ever read. But because she is “established” in the genre and I am only “emerging,” I realized with some chagrin as I was reading Blowout, her newest and best poetry collection to date, that I will never have a chance to blurb one of Duhamel’s books. We are poets of two generations. I belong to the one that comes after—and am grateful.
Then, I thought, what would Denise Duhamel do if she wanted to write a blurb of a book but knew she was unlikely to be asked? I think the poet-problem-solver would find a way, and in that spirit of playful tenacity, I offer the blurbs below:
