Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust Blog Tour Jan. 1-Jan. 31, 2016

Hello everyone, we’ve got a new tour filling up for Jan. 1-Jan. 31, 2016: Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust, a poetry collection of published by Press 53 in April 2015.

Paradise Drive links 80 sonnets in a narrative about a modern Pilgrim on a journey from rust belt Pennsylvania to the glittering suburbs of Marin County, California. The book takes great pleasure in questioning, tinkering with, and ultimately exploding the sonnet form. It has been well received, with more than 50 reviews and features since its release last April. Rumpus and the Washington Review of Books included it in their National Poetry Month picks, and the San Francisco Chronicle recently published this review.

Here’s what others are saying:

“Foust drives her Keatsian sensibility straight into the 21st century of terrorism and autism, divorce and yoga, soldiers and syringes, booze and valet parking.” –Molly Peacock

“Foust reinvents the sonnet form. … a masterful book and also a great deal of fun to read.” —James Cummins

“There is great music in these poems, and sonnet after sonnet is masterful. Not since Berryman’s Henry have I been so engaged by a persona.” —Thomas Lux

Other reviewers are engaged as well:

“Bay Area poet Rebecca Foust emerges as an original voice in contemporary poetry.” —Diana Whitney, San Francisco Chronicle

“This book proves that the record of humankind will be found in poetry. It is funny and compelling. It aches with truth.” –Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books

“Foust’s language makes me think of Nabokov and how dark and light he can be in the same phrase. Like Nabokov, Foust knows when to turn up the heat or turn down the lights.” –Dean Rader, Huffington Post

“Foust has created a ripe mixture of classic and contemporary poetry within a classic form, which readers can and will spend hours ruminating over.” – Serena Agusto-Cox, Savvy Verse & Wit

“What made Chaucer relevant to his time is what makes Foust relevant and compelling for us today.” —M.B. McClatchey, The Collagist

Photo Credit: Jeremy Thornton

About the Poet:

Rebecca Foust was the 2014 Dartmouth Poet in Residence and is the recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, the MacDowell Colony, and the Sewanee Writer’s Conference Her fifth book, Paradise Drive, won the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry. Her other books include All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song (Many Mountains Moving Prize), God, Seed (Foreword Book of the Year Award) and two chapbooks that won the Robert Phillips Chapbook Prizes in 2008 and 2009. Foust’s poems appear widely in journals including American Academy of Poets Poem-A-Day series, Hudson Review, Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily, Sewanee Review, and Verse Daily. A first generation college graduate, Foust attended Smith College (BA 1979), Stanford Law School (1979), and Warren Wilson College (MFA 2010). She lives in Northern California and works as Poetry Editor for Women’s Voices for Change and assistant editor for Narrative Magazine. She also won the 2015 American Literary Review Creative Writing Award for Fiction judged by Garth Greenwell and the 2015 James Heart Poetry Prize judged by Jane Hirshfield.

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Tour Stops:

January 1: Eva Lucia (review)
January 5: Everything Distils Into Reading (review)
January 6: Jorie Loves a Story (review)
January 7: I’d Rather Be at the Beach (review)
January 9: Eccentric Everything (review)
January 11: Musings of a Bookish Kitty (review)
January 13: Diary of an Eccentric (Video post)
January 15: True Book Addict (review)
January 20: I’m Lost in Books (video post)
January 25: Emma Eden Ramos (review)
January 26: Bookgirl’s Nightstand (video post)
January 27: Necromancy Never Pays (review)
January 28: Suko’s Notebook (review)
January 30: Create With Joy (review)
TBD: Absurd Book Nerd (review)

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