Pink Noise

Author: Kevin Holden

Publisher: Nightboat Books (2023)

Pink Noise orbits in spaces of memory, longing, violence, solidarity, the ecological, and the mystical. Experimental in its forms and lexicon, in poems ranging widely in style and scale, it moves through layers of musical intensity as it reworks the visual space of the page to generate sensations of presence and revelation. Simultaneously lucid and syntactically disjunctive, these poems are queer and radical not only in their content, but in their grammar.

"In Pink Noise, sometimes like a crackling icicle you see a glimmer of diamond dust, pink by nature. Here, in this book of poems. The lines are electric, conveying a new kind of sensuality, all quick and zapped. An oncoming fusion of poetic thinking with the sciences. Exciting! What we’ve been waiting for."

—Fanny Howe

"These poems are flecked with quartz and risk, love and dejection, pink and blood-red ecstatic brooding. Kevin’s line redirects consciousness to the magic of forgotten minutia and overlooked associative deliverance 'from cypress to pine before / fierce queen on a blank stage.' His language sets that stage for a tenderness that is in no way meek, for a sense of divinity found where life is. His is one of the voices that sets the bar for what poetry can do in this world."

—Harmony Holiday