Inspired by displays at a small natural history museum, the poems in Lisa Allen Ortiz’s collection, Guide to the Exhibit, are quirky and scientific—grimy, focused, funny, always illuminating. With humility and curiosity, Ortiz animates the odd and overlooked; she is moved to learn how to see more clearly both as lover and as griever. Speaking the names of things—animals, skeletons, teeth, feathers—connects us with the complications of being alive. How does the stillness of an exhibit encourage us to be deliberate about love and joy? Does knowing more increase the pleasure of felt experience? This poet is paying close attention to love while death and sorrow lurk nearby. “Survival is the mutest joy,” Ortiz writes. Guide to the Exhibit looks outward and reflects, examines, links, and contradicts.

 
Perugia Press Prize: A prize of $1000 and publication by Perugia Press is given annually for a first or second unpublished poetry collection by a woman. The next deadline is November 15, 2016.