"Winner of the James Laughlin Award, the expansive collection from Machado (Some Beheadings) is both luxurious and cerebral, funneling her debut’s torqued syntax into a fever dream of 'the silk route upon which I came.' … This delightful book is full of depth and discovery."—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"In this gorgeously rendered work from Machado (Some Beheadings), the speaker travels a reimagined contemporary silk route, suffused with a sense of unbelonging ('I came low like low things…barter[ing] my socialisms for some mastic or gâteau'), and arrives at the rich temptations of a vast emporium…VERDICT: A Laughlin Award winner; stunning work for sophisticated readers."—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Starred Review
"Hers is an expansive lyric, one that exists as a sequence of sections broken into postcard collage, lyric fragment, prose exploration, billboard phrases and doctor’s notes…Emporium is a story told through the collage, the accumulation-collage of fragments, lyrics and prose-structures, one with not even a narrative centre or even the character of the merchant woman, but a seeking, searching, lyric heart."—rob mclennan, rob mclennan's blog
"Machado weaves together the financial, social and political in this poetic traipse through the market. She encourages us to meditate on our own livelihood and purchasing patterns, to think about what truly benefits us in our survival. These poems ask deep questions rooted in worth—what is comfort worth, what is money worth? What is monetizable, and what should or should not be? Where are our coins, and our happiness, going when we buy something? Whatever answers we find have both individual and global importance."—Vagabond City
"Again, Machado leaves me thinking about the possibilities of language and a translator’s genius brain, the folds of the 'royal mantle.' What I’m trying to say is that Aditi Machado is a genius! I consistently feel challenged by her work. Winner of the 2019 James Laughlin Award, Machado’s Emporium is a sustaining book of rhythmic, unwavering poems, sharp-eyed in her interpretations of silk, gender, and purity, discerning in her understanding of the strangeness of language.—Paul Cunningham, Tarpaulin Sky
"Dear Aditi, I did receive 'Route Marienbad.' Read it. Had the feeling I was discovering a real poet. A wonderful feeling. I hope you keep this 'innocence,' this directness, this genuineness. Bonne chance."—Etel Adnan
"Aditi Machado’s first book is as breathtaking as it is refreshing. The poet sustains a gentle, rigorous honesty that feels entirely holy."—Believer Poetry Award
"As an artist you have to be very lucky or very gifted to create anything so compellingly amiss. If you can do it three times, you are more than lucky. Machado’s is a career to follow."—Cal Bedient, Lana Turner
"A thickly-textured, richly-sensed collection, Emporium is porous and deft, as aware of the limits of the self and language as it is the potential to be alive and awake to the physical world and the powers pulsating through it."—Hannah VanderHart, EcoTheo Review
