The Bigger World

by Noelle Kocot

"Characterized by an utter irreducibility, Noelle Kocot's poetry displays an elemental movement of thinking and suggests a poetics of vision. . .one of loss and the impossible yet necessary compensations for lossreal and mythological. Funny, unpredictable, and deliciously dark, these poems celebrate the manifold possibilities of love and human experience.Noelle Kocot is the author of four previous collections of poetry, including Sunny Wednesday and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Fund for Poetry, and the American Poetry Review. She currently lives in New Jersey.

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2011

About the author

Noelle Kocot is the author of four collections of poetry, with a limited-edition discography forthcoming in 2010, and a fifth full-length (The Bigger World) forthcoming in 2011. Her most recent full-length collections include Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006). She is also the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune (both from Four Way Books). She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, The Fund for Poetry and the American Poetry Review. She currently lives in New Jersey.

For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/25-...

Reviews

[Holly Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sly, cryptic prose poems.You know what I remember most about them, though, is the totally beautiful typeface. Whoever put this book together deserves a fucking ribbon. Noelle Kocot deserves one too I guess.

[Laura Desiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bigger World was one of my favorite books of poetry in 2011. This book introduces you to a host of a strange characters in even stranger settings, where surreal things take place, such as dead uncles sending you fruit baskets from the afterlife. At first I didn't know what to make of them, these characters, these poems. They all have a similar structure and tone, a disjointed quality. One moment someone is dying. The next, an owl swoops in. But after you read a few, these voices pull you in. You get caught up in the hypnosis of strange. There is a lot of sadness in these poems, but that just makes them all the more beautiful. Highly recommend.

[Vito · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://irunfrombears.com/post/3557486...

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kocot's poetry collection, "The Bigger World," forces the reader to step outside one's scope and see daily interactions from other points of view. At times, the speakers appeared simplistic and disconnected from their reality, urging the reader to yearn for a deeper insight for the human condition.

I immediately chose to interpret the disconnect as a fault in the writing, but realized that this is a common happenstance - Kocot gives the reader an accurate account of what one might witness without having the full backstory or connection with an acquaintance. By the end of her collection, Kocot taught me to put away my judgements and accept each poem as is (as is most interactionss with those we do not know very well): a simple window, that has been opened, albeit briefly, and that alone, should be a gift of grace.

[Dlmoore83 Moore]

just started it and was blown away with the universal poignance of the first poem....

[Ingrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark, makes you think of human experiences, love, culture and life in general. Small and big ideas.

[Andy McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

The full title of this fun collection is The Bigger World, the Character Poems of Noelle Kocot. A catalogue of sorts then, a catalogue of quirky vignettes, all in the same form, in this case. There are a few oblique references to biblical and classical Greek figures in these portraits of (sur)real characters. Be ready for a tongue-in-cheek but no less true depth, and a smile here and there.
Here is a poem I particularly enjoyed:

Gnomon

A mirthy owl stands past breathing.
It is a plate-glass rescue
Of the ten thousand things.
Martha knew it once, came
To her own conclusions.
Then her spirit cried for respite
And release. There was no
Other season for the blatant cross-
Road of the yellow trees.
There was no other, Martha
Knew as she flew to the giant
Warmth in the desert of the real.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, she's done it again! Kocot has a way of making everything extraordinary.