Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway

“An incredible feat of vision and voice … technically, nothing is out of Oliver’s grasp. Her go-to iambic pentameter can swallow anything in its path. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats … When she succeeds, she succeeds entirely.”—Michael Lista, "On Poetry"

"Theatrical, funny, formally ingenious, Alexandra Oliver’s poems revel in their extravagance. A slam poet turned formalist, Oliver takes a cue from Larkin’s “Pleasure Principle,” her poems little machines precision-crafted for the reader’s pleasure."—National Post

"Oliver writes as though wit were her middle name ... she is an assassin clever and precise as a clock.”—Michael Dennis

"Alexandra Oliver has many arrows in her quiver—all of them sharpened to a fine point. In satirical work like “The Classics Lesson,” she is mordantly funny. Yet she can also treat her subjects quietly and with touching understatement, as in “Chinese Food with Gavra, Aged Three.” Ms. Oliver is, moreover, technically resourceful in the best sense. For example, in “Doug Hill” the verbal repetitions of the pantoum form perfectly suit the obsessive voice of the romantically disappointed protagonist. This is an excellent and entertaining collection."—Timothy Steele

"It is sometimes argued that our disjunctive times need to be mirrored by disjunctive forms: only aesthetic disorder can respond to our experience. Such a simplicity is disproven by Alexandra Oliver’s Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, in which disjunctions of many kinds (such as the one in her title) are brought to order by the poet’s refining passion and corrosive wit. Here are brilliantly contemporary poems in traditional forms, the work of a stunning new voice."—Charles Martin

"Alexandra Oliver is in full command of a saber wit and impeccable ear. With these she tackles nothing less than the unsettling hazards, absurd encounters, and oddball ironies of our modern predicament to make poems that bite and entertain. That they are also by turns tender, sad, and rueful speaks not only to her range but to the underlying intensity of feeling. For Oliver’s considerable formal skills are always employed to prod and direct poetry’s energies to keep pace with the contemporary world. Lucky the reader along for the ride."—Jeanne Marie Beaumont, author of The Burning of Three Fires and Curious Conduct

“An incredible feat of vision and voice … technically, nothing is out of Oliver’s grasp. Her go-to iambic pentameter can swallow anything in its path. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats … When she succeeds, she succeeds entirely.”—Michael Lista, "On Poetry"

"Theatrical, funny, formally ingenious, Alexandra Oliver’s poems revel in their extravagance. A slam poet turned formalist, Oliver takes a cue from Larkin’s “Pleasure Principle,” her poems little machines precision-crafted for the reader’s pleasure."—National Post

"Oliver writes as though wit were her middle name ... she is an assassin clever and precise as a clock.”—Michael Dennis

"Alexandra Oliver has many arrows in her quiver—all of them sharpened to a fine point. In satirical work like “The Classics Lesson,” she is mordantly funny. Yet she can also treat her subjects quietly and with touching understatement, as in “Chinese Food with Gavra, Aged Three.” Ms. Oliver is, moreover, technically resourceful in the best sense. For example, in “Doug Hill” the verbal repetitions of the pantoum form perfectly suit the obsessive voice of the romantically disappointed protagonist. This is an excellent and entertaining collection."—Timothy Steele

"It is sometimes argued that our disjunctive times need to be mirrored by disjunctive forms: only aesthetic disorder can respond to our experience. Such a simplicity is disproven by Alexandra Oliver’s Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, in which disjunctions of many kinds (such as the one in her title) are brought to order by the poet’s refining passion and corrosive wit. Here are brilliantly contemporary poems in traditional forms, the work of a stunning new voice."—Charles Martin

"Alexandra Oliver is in full command of a saber wit and impeccable ear. With these she tackles nothing less than the unsettling hazards, absurd encounters, and oddball ironies of our modern predicament to make poems that bite and entertain. That they are also by turns tender, sad, and rueful speaks not only to her range but to the underlying intensity of feeling. For Oliver’s considerable formal skills are always employed to prod and direct poetry’s energies to keep pace with the contemporary world. Lucky the reader along for the ride."—Jeanne Marie Beaumont, author of The Burning of Three Fires and Curious Conduct