Bright Brave Phenomena

her] own way,’ to name a few—but where others might succumb to the doldrums of skepticism or even madness, Nadelberg finds innumerable ways of pulling herself together. This is a beautifully affirming book.” —Timothy Donnelly “Amanda Nadelberg’s Bright Brave Phenomena gives us a poetic speaker so youthful and mercurial that we immediately want to call her charming—except that she also warns, ‘I will spit / in the face of anyone who says I’m / charming.’ But the primary colors of the book are blue and yellow and green, and the ocean is never far away, and we are made part of ‘a whole / movement of people refusing to / leave their dogs at home.’ It’s all sun and solecism (‘Come on, I’m exciting to be with you’), wildly changing accents and registers, and things missed in the heat of the moment. ‘Shenanigans: yes. / Drama, no.’” —Ange Mlinko “What we have here is a lovely collection of Nadelberg inventions. These inventions are for telling it like it is. In order to do this they variously prick your arm, burn down, protest, pretend, and dance, to name just a few. . . . These are indeed very Bright Brave Phenomena, that’s right.” —Rod Smith “With an array of interwoven free verse poems enacting a strong sense of voice and character, Bright Brave Phenomena, Amanda Nadelberg’s second poetry collection, employs a tight, quick line to carry this fairly substantial volume.” —LAReview “Bright Brave Phenomena is a system of resilient, big-hearted machines, the warm chaos of the light in the grass, or the grass in the light, a field of slightly glitched musics tending to the terrible loveliness that makes us human. . . . Good thing that Nadelberg’s poems remind us how many hearts we have, and how necessary it is to keep giving them away. Enjoy this book. It insists.” —On the Seawall “Bright Brave Phenomena is clever and complex, convoluted and clear. . . . The poems all work, and they work together beautifully. Nadelberg’s slippages and intricate links often dazzle us, but she keeps the brightness controlled; we’re never blinded, never burned.” —The Volta “Propelled by a tender attention that resists anything being inconsequential, these poems delight in buoyant movements, establishing a logic based on wonder and emotional truth that asks, as desperately as it does joyfully, how is it we can touch the world knowing we cannot hold on to anything.” —Coldfront