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Winner of the Tupelo Press Poetry Competition
“When language, sensory experience, and imagination meet and mingle in an inventive and convincing way, we have the ingredients for those moments of grace that characterize important poems. Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Miracle Fruit is rich in such luscious moments. Every line is alive with the excitement of what can be known about the world, every poem bursting with an eagerness to share it.”
— Gregory Orr, Judge Second Annual Tupelo Press Poetry Competition
About the Author
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of Lucky Fish (2011). Her previous books are At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), winner of the Balcones Prize, and Miracle Fruit (2003), winner of the Tupelo Press Prize, the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in poetry, and the Global Filipino Award. Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared inPrairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, FIELD, Mid-American Review, and Tin House.
Aimee was awarded a 2009 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, has twice served as a faculty member at the Kundiman retreat for Asian-American writers and has given readings and workshops from Amsterdam to San Francisco. She is associate professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia, where she is a recipient of the campus-wide Hagan Young Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor’s Medal for Scholarly and Creative Activities. She lives with her husband and two young sons.
Advanced Praise
Carlene Sobrino Bonnivier finds Aimee Nezhukumatathil “a sensual soul-detective” in the October 2004 issue of Our Own Voice review of Miracle Fruit http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2004c-4.shtml.
Publishers Weekly reviewed Miracle Fruit, in the September 1, 2003 issue:http://www.tupelopress.org/bookreviews/miraclereview1.shtml.
Read the Miracle Fruit review from the May 2004 issue of The Women’s Review of Books:http://www.tupelopress.org/bookreviews/miraclereview2.shtml.
“In these fine and searching poems, Nezhukumatathil pushes and grabs at the world, wanting more and striving to name what cannot be named. As she does we see that everything is in fact miracle fruit, including this book itself.”— Andrew Hudgins
“Aimee Nezhukumatathil is able to handle serious subjects with the lightest of touches. Her edgy humor and keen eye keep her poems buoyant and fresh.”— Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate
“Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s delightful poems celebrate the glories of the tongue, in both senses of the word. I can think of no other poet — except Neruda — who has inscribed the sensual world with such accurate charm. …Aimee Nezhukumatathil understands the loving and funny relations between mother and daughter. She understands the folkways of India and Ohio, and she might be the only American poet who can swear in Tagalog. Her poems are seriously delicious: toothsome and saucy, wise and mischievous.” — Alice Fulton
“Aimee Nezhukumatathil uses poetry to write of the wonders of the natural world. She writes about being brown in white America, about being a daughter, a wife, a mother, of being a woman making sense of her own skin. Her poem ‘Small Murders’ tells of Antony and Cleopatra, Napoleon and Josephine, how scents were woven through their loves: when a new suitor admires her perfume given by another, ‘by evening’s end, I let him have it: twenty-seven kisses / on my neck, twenty-seven small murders of you.’ The poem ends with the elegant twist of a very sharp knife.” — Roxane Gay, Poetry Magazine
Winner of the 2002 James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry from Shenandoah, The Washington and Lee University Review.
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9710310-8-1