Thicket

Melanie Janisse-Barlow’s second book of poetry, Thicket, is a treatise on risk and the uncertainties of language in the modern world. In poems that gather and collect force page after page, Thicket negotiates humankind’s overwhelming desire to communicate, and the discomfort that comes with the process of entanglement/disentanglement. When Janisse-Barlow writes of a “thousand awkward conversations,” she’s working away at the knots of language, unraveling and recombining the threads to create self-styled lyric essays. Thicket is a linguistic tour de force.

Praise for Thicket

In a sense the gorgeous mutant child of Jenny Holzer and Ken Babstock, given its power-blocks, loaded with neologisms and linguistic triple-axels, yet wholly hers—Janisse-Barlow’s Thicket is a thrillingly original and word-perfect satellite containing masses of tight images—immaculate goosenecks, glitter, snails, stone lions and dogshit—it is a colony of rage, rescue, love and humbling grace.—Lynn Crosbie

Thicket is a masterful book. Stories, images, dreams, ideas and elements of dailiness weave through and nestle within Janisse-Barlow’s gorgeous, and absorbing, stanzas. I read and re-read these poems, finding something new each time. As poet herself observes: “Pass us over and we can slip back and forth unannounced.”—Lynn Crawford