Eye Level by Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie's Eye Level won the Walt Whitman Award this year.  Her poems talk of wandering and discovery in the world, literally and in the spaces they create.  Her language is just sparse enough for your mind to see her images in the white space between them.  The poems feel groundless, but not rootless--they are the plants that live on air.  Buy here.

From "Rootless"

My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns. // At present, on this sleeper train, there's nowhere to arrive. / Me? I'm just here in my traveler's clothes, trying on each passing town for size.

From "No Animal"

There go the pair! White tails studding the thicket. / Emptied of the embarrassment of need. // I stay behind. / The present tense gets close, but doesn't enter me.

From "Tending"

Rain stains everything. // Water pulls off the blindfold. / Draws forth what's been planted.