Books
What Keeps Me Awake
“What Keeps Me Awake” is a brilliant debut offering of poetry by Brian Jerrold Koester. These poems run the gamut of all emotions and both softly and yet roughly whet the reader’s appetite to delve further into one’s own subconscious to discover hidden alcoves where lost sins, secrets and questions are waiting to be answered.
Bossa Nova
“In this collection, Koester grapples with his brother’s suicide, and the poems are often stark portraits of loss and longing. Even in poems with ‘lighter’ subject matter, there is something ominous, like metal on your tongue. But I always finish this collection feeling full, having been fed.
“When first reading these poems, I was drawn to the highly defined images—’dust, fine and smooth as refined flour’—as well as images that clashed and were perplexing—’the shortest shadow of a star.’ What is the shortest shadow of a star? I don’t know, but I can see it. In terms of presentation, these poems are a great lesson in reduction. Each is reduced to its essentials. Sometimes, Koester will risk a reader’s failure to immediately comprehend a phrase in using only the necessary words. I like the risk, and it pays off.”
—Marley Stuart, Director, River Glass Books,
from an interview in The Blue Mountain Review issue 15