The Unexploded Ordnance Bin

by Rebecca Foust

Poetry. 'The ticking IS the bomb, ' Nick Flynn says, and the idea of events from our genetic, cultural, historic, and experienced past--coiled and waiting to explode in our lives--lies at the core of Rebecca Foust's new collection, winner of the 2018 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Award. THE UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE BIN presents new poems that ignite a long, sparking fuse about contemporary culture, society, and political events now dividing family, community, and country.--Left Coast Writer

49 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Rebecca Foust’s new book, ONLY released from Four Way Books in 2022 and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly Foust is the author of three chapbooks including The Unexploded Ordnance Bin (2018 Swan Scythe Chapbook Award) and four books including Paradise Drive, (Press 53 Award for Poetry). Recognitions include the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry judged by Kaveh Akbar, the CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, a 2017-19 Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Recent poems are in The Cincinnati Review, The Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, POETRY, and elsewhere. Contact her on her at https://rebeccafoust.com/ or @FoustRebecca on Facebook, or @rebecca.foust.52 on Instagram.
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Reviews

[Ann Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this incredibly original and charged book, beauty is change, the standing theme which can be heartbreaking as told in fluid nonconforming lines and breaks, leaving the reader to absorb a tremendous impact like the bomb exploding on an Oregon child in the poem of the title of the book. Foust writes in a meticulous and tender style about how her children break the chrysalis of identity and upend society's cultural monarchy. Grieving for the original identity of a trans child, yet loving the newness has rarely been explored in writing. Also, autism in it's uniqueness and a child wandering the beach in a rarefied manner.
These are themes that need to be out there. Like the blue morph butterflies and the blue morph snow geese. one's beauty is not attached to the mass. This is an excellent read.

[Michael Northen · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the publication The Unexploded Ordnance Bin, Rebecca Foust has returned to the landscape of Dark Card, the collection of poems about her son’s autism that set on her career path. Not only does she continue where this discussion left off, she addresses other social issues, that culminate in the book’s final section where she explores what it means to be the mother of a transgender child. Throughout the book Foust’s skill as a poet who knows her craft are on full display. These are difficult poems to read and are sure to invite discussion from readers with a wide variety of viewpoints; nevertheless, having been an editor for over a dozen years of a quarterly journal that reviews disability poetry , I can say that among books of poetry that I have read in the last few years, The Unexploded Ordnance Bin book moves right up among the top books on the list.

[Pumpkina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca Foust compresses complex emotions and complicated stories into beautifully-wrought poems. What I love most about her work is the way it can speak to all kinds of people, meeting us where we are even as it guides us to new insights and fresh modes of expression. Stunning.

[Bob Wake · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review is online at www.coffeespew.org.

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca Foust delivers heart-ripping poem after gut-wrenching poem all adroitly looped together. The Unexploded Ordnance Bin is simultaneously tender and brutal, and skillfully sculpted for the maximum emotional punch. Due to its emotional density—navigating trauma that is personal, historical, and political—and its three tightly coherent sections, it feels much more like a full-length than a chapbook. These are striking poems of witness and transformation:

This is the blow that matters. This is the way

the car goes on, out of the light. This is the deer conjured
in retrograde grace, the ardent arc of her body
scoring the night and trailing bright streamers
of glass and mist. . .