The Nightyard

Like a steampunk great-grandniece of Lorine Niedecker, Stephanie Anderson has cobbled together a quirky, hardscrabble, and defiantly pre-digital idiolect in The Nightyard. Scrupulously crafted and a little austere in temperament, Anderson’s poems read, in part, like studies of the Protestant work ethic run amok, trusting in hard facts and practical tips to tame a mind “too bound to reverie.” Anderson offsets the smothered music of “a barrel organ being—quelched” with the racket that emerges when “all the tiny pianos begin to tilt off the shelves,” correcting the rage for order with a dose of human chaos. The poems in The Nightyard are wise, tireless, uncommonly passionate and truly hard-won. Trust in them.