July Westhale
writer & translator
"I was wholly unprepared for the exceptional skill and aesthetic courage I encountered when I opened the book, skill and courage that remained from the first line to the last. It is so much easier to perform rather than to be honest."
—Robin Coste Lewis, National Book Award winner for Voyage of the Sable Venus.
"July Westhale’s poetry seems accompanied with a tuning fork’s pitch, a heightened, pressing, weaponized immediacy. Whatever she faced to earn that ability would have killed a lesser mortal, we can be sure."
Review of Trailer Trash, Booklist
"With subtlety and skill, Westhale reminds the reader that sensory experience is irrevocably changed once it is relayed in language."
Via Negativa, Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"To explore the tension between comprehension and ownership, connection and possession, especially as it relates to our mistreatment of the natural world, Westhale shifts the frame of our experience to other spaces and realms, so that we might see ourselves anew."
Bob Hicok, author of Hold and Water Look Away
"July Westhale's "Ars Poetica" will renew your idea of how a poem stands in midair with the lush brilliance, where yes, dodgeball and love align forces! I want this collection in our lives! Westhale beautifully recalibrates our understanding of a footnote as only a poet could reimagine!"
CAConrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death
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July Westhale © 2021