Jennifer L. Knox

In The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Jennifer L. Knox expands on her inimitable cast of characters, in hilariously poignant poems. In poems like "Marriage" and "One Ton of Dirt," Knox ventures further into autobiographical territory than she's ever gone before, in ways that will startle those familiar with her previous books, exploring relationships with her exes, her parents, and her younger self. Like the best comedians (to whom she's often compared), Knox is never merely funny. Each of her speakers, even the bedraggled coyote that walks into a Quizno's, has something important to say. Bob Hicock describes the effect of her trademark dark humor perfectly when he says, "The oddities of her work create a space in which it's possible to be oddly sincere. Knox is asking what really matters, in poems that move powerfully toward an answer." www.jenniferlknox.com.

The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway

The poems in Jennifer L. Knox’s darkly imaginative collection, Crushing It, unearth epiphanies in an unbounded landscape of forms, voices and subjects—from history to true crime to epidemiology—while exploring our tenuous connections and disconnections. From Merle Haggard lifting his head from a pile of cocaine to absurdist romps through an apocalypse where mushrooms learn to sing, this versatile collection is brimming with dark humor and bright surprise. Alongside Knox’s distinctive surrealism, Crushing It also reveals autobiography in poems about love, family, and adult ADHD, and Knox’s empathetic depictions of the ego’s need to assert its precious, singular “I” suggest that a self distinct from the hive, the herd, the flock, is an illusion. With clear-eyed spirit, Crushing It swallows all the world, and then some.

Jennifer L. Knox

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