Beautiful in the Mouth

This debut collection was selected by Thomas Lux as winner of BOA's 8th Annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Lux has also written a Foreword. His endorsement will draw interest to this dynamic new poet. Additionally, Kuipers' distinguished position as Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University should be emphasized as an indication of her talent and the expecations for her poetry career. Kuipers will split her time between Stanford and Missoula, giving her the opportunity to promote her book in different regions. In Kuipers' own words, the book was written "over the course of a geographic journey spanning five years and taking me from New York City to a wilderness area in southern Oregon, from the streets of Paris to the trout streams of western Montana. On this journey, the combination and distortion of these various landscapes—urban vs. rural, domestic vs. wild—allowed me to examine contemporary female loss in terms of both literal and figurative geography." Kuipers manages the tough task of tackling difficult subjects while focusing on communicating clearly to her audience. As she says, "Whether my reader is a man or a woman, I am ultimately most interested in communicating with my audience. My poems are a point of entry for discussion and conversation with the reader and they have no interest in being elusive or standing at a distance."