Goat in the Snow

Book excerpt: Poetry. "Emily Pettit has included a number of 'how to' poems in her nimble and dazzling first collection, such as: 'How to Make No Noise, ' and the especially useful 'How to Avoid Confronting Most Large Animals.' Her kindness is always ahead of us, anticipating the problems we will or won't run into, and we always end up in a different, precise place than the one we started out from, as she reassuringly tells us: 'You know / you know you know. It's all uncertainty / and your neck. You walk slowly / in a calm voice.' GOAT IN THE SNOW is multicolored, ever-changing, a delight to try to clasp." John Ashbery "GOAT IN THE SNOW is like a taste test between an etch-a-sketch and a spotlight, a race between a wind-up beetle and an idea. The certainty of Pettit's 'I know, ' and 'I think' quickly turns into a quicksand of questions. Perceptive, jumpy and perfectly odd, this book encourages you to 'try to maneuver like a spacecraft / passing sufficiently close to a planet / in order to make some relatively detailed observations / Without landing.'" Matthea Harvey "The poems in GOAT IN THE SNOW often ask odd, penetrating questions. 'What do you call a field of black telephones ringing?' 'Where did you find such a stunning embankment?' 'Is this what loving someone is like?' 'Do you remember the basement?' 'In what direction do you look when someone says something true?' These poems are full of mortal awareness, and are sophisticated without being ornate or 'poetic.' When the poet says, 'Once in modest and murky water, I had a very disturbing conversation with a boat,"' I don't feel as if she is writing in metaphor. I feel like something real has happened." Matthew Zapruder"