on SONGS & BALLADS:

Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune (“Best Poetry Collections of 2018”):

“Turner refuses rustic nostalgia, her critique of what William Blake called ‘the Ratio’ an elegy for the future. Mega-fires sweep through the garbage piling at the feet of a storefront angel: ‘couldn’t turn around and go back if we wanted to/ like handfuls of gravel/ the storm couldn’t turn around if it wanted to.'”

Publishers Weekly review:

“Turner dazzles in a debut of postmodern arrangements that challenge contemporary poetry’s relative lack of overt song-like structure. She sings of the unnoticed or the decidedly ugly; for example, there are songs of “household goods,” “insurance,” and “towns.” In “Risk Management Song,” she writes, “so we commissioned a document/ about sustenance and the city’s pores/ metaphors of food and skin/ for when the water rises.” Over the subsequent five quatrains, Turner varies the closing refrain until she ends where she started: “for when the water rises// gathered all of us around// glossy invulnerable tables/ to hear and judge a list of songs/ the agents recognize.” […] Turner just might inspire some readers to sing.“

review by Devin King, Berfrois

“I don’t know about you, but this is how I change the words to Bowie songs that I personalize for my baby or my cats—slowly, inconsequentially, but then all of a sudden the id takes over and we’re in the darker territory of angels.”

review by Rob McLennan

“The idea of the ‘song’ holding a series of truths, histories and commentaries is, obviously, one of the oldest methods of record-keeping and composition, and Turner writes her own Songs & Ballads with that in mind, combined with a deeply engaged ecopoetic.”

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interviews

with Zach Savich, Tupelo Quarterly

12 or 20 questions (second series), Rob McLennan’s blog

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