Tuned Doves

Author: Eric Baus

Publisher: Octopus Books (2009)

In his follow-up to the acclaimed The To Sound (Verse Press/Wave Books 2004), Eric Baus's second full-length poetry book is a continuation of his experimentation with the elongated lyric prose form.

"In Tuned Doves, there's a figure who discovers 'human or animal bones in the REM movements of babies.' As if that isn't fabulous enough, there's writing that's both prehensile and irreversible: a dismantled mouth that's capable of both a 'normal hello' and the subtly grotesque 'language of flags.' In this way, Eric Baus writes at the dark edge of an imaginary nation, collapsing us, with each climbing page, into an oral, incendiary architecture. As a poet, then, he's the flame-thrower, he's the one who says: catch."

–Bhanu Kapil