Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In
Stet, Dora Malech adds a stiff dose of emotional urgency to formal experiment, finding in anagrams, erasures, and Oulipean constraints like the 'beautiful outlaw' a way to advance a continual re-interpretation of deeply felt content. . . . Malech’s effort . . . foregrounds the beauty and power of what form—and the willingness to follow it without knowing the end result—can achieve."
---Marcella Durand, Hyperallergic"[
Stet] is a package of dynamite that could go off at any moment—combustible words that separate and come together like a gorgeous debris. They tweak the page with hidden truths made of language and utterances that are puzzle solvers—but what is the puzzle? Perhaps dimensionality on the page that speaks only if you want it. . . . Some pages are electro-pop, some are written by a spirit animal, but Malech’s got pipes, and by God they sing."
---Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books"The poems in
Stet often contain a forward and backward movement enacted through language play. In [Malech's] use of anagrams and rhymes, her subtle transpositions of letters from one word to the next . . . she lays bare the process of figuring out what to tell and how to tell it, especially at times when language fails us most. . . . It is play with a purpose, because between the words and white space, 'Sometimes we step into something true.'"
---Maya Phillips, American Poets"In this collection, we see a poet playing with language, cavorting with words and meanings that continue cascading into something else, something new, always metamorphosizing. This sense of play has value: Malech demonstrates her love and admiration for language as she shares poems that are playful, that are musical, and that make us think about words as arrangements of symbols that we ultimately assign meaning to. These poems remind us that poems do not always have to have a clear narrative, and their value is not necessarily in their decipherability."
---Despy Boutris, Gulf Coast Magazine"[A] smart, at times pyrotechnic collection—she structures many of her lines with anagram—that is, like all great poetry, a joy to read aloud."
---Spencer Hupp, Sewanee Review"I was half amazed, half inspired, fully captivated by Malech’s form. Reading this book exposed me to a type of writing I hadn’t considered before, one that sets its own boundaries and breaks them all within one poem."
---Sarah Sham, Crashtest
