Winner of the 2001 Alberta Prize, Chelsey Minnis' book represents a progressive yet individualized position in the galaxy of truly contemporary poetry. With formal invention and a wild personae, ZIRCONIA compels one to follow gem-strewn trails of feminine intuition, savagery, ennui, fantasy, and intimacy to their diabolically fruitful conclusions.

Zirconia

Literature & Fiction

Minnis, Chelsey

Literary

Fence Books

"Juvenile mockery of poetry and the American poetry establishment, as well as excited reverence for both, are the themes of [Chelsey] Minnis's second collection."—Publishers Weekly
"Decadent! Childish! . . . indulgent and melancholy . . . moments of extreme morbidity and anger."—Arielle Greenberg
"Her poems take some getting used to."—Robert Strong
"Many won't find her . . . acceptable at all...—Cole Swensen

Bad Bad

Humor & Satire

A fearless and uproarious litany of contentions and revelations on poetry and the poetic mind, continuing the charge against the sacred in contemporary poetry. Poemland alternates brilliantly between the deadpan, the spectacular, and the outrageous.
If you open your mouth to start to complain I will fill it with whipped cream . . .
There is a floating sadness nearby . . .
Chelsey Minnis is the author of three previous collections. A graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she currently lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Poemland

United States

Wave Books

"One of the most unusual and persuasive books of poems I’ve read in some time."―Dwight Garner, New York Times
“In a flurry of ideas, and with her typically sparse and open-ended lines, Minnis approaches her subject from a dizzying array of angles: ironic, celebratory, mournful, panicked, and often funny.” ―Publishers Weekly
Chelsey Minnis’s new collection of poems follows the struggle of a flawed character in a cinematic world. Playing with old ideas of wealth and love from Holly wood’s golden era, these poems flirt with nostalgia without ever succumbing to it, casting a new light on the present through the fantasies of the past.
What do you want with me? I’m just a dirty little shoplifter. I’m like a woman in a sequined gown in a dark cave. Can you tell me I’m worse than others? OK, yes, I’m worse than others, but can you say I’m the worst of all?
Chelsey Minnis grew up in Denver. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of Poemland (Wave Books, 2009), Zirconia (Fence Books, 2001), Foxina (Seeing Eye Books, 2002) and Bad Bad (Fence Books, 2007). She lives in Boulder, Colorado. She also writes screenplays.

Baby, I Don't Care

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Baby, I Don't Care (Wave Books)

Collected in this volume are Chelsey Minnis’s first two books: Zirconia (winner of the Alberta Prize) and Bad Bad. Zirconia introduced a speaker described as “half-smirking, half-weeping” by the Village Voice. Minnis heralded the gurlesque, a term coined for the occasion and defined as “a feminine, feminist incorporating of the grotesque and cruel with the spangled and dreamy.” Bad Bad ushers Zirconia’s juvenile persona into unblushing womanhood. The poems are equally clownish and fuck-offish, taking on with equivocal weightlessness the lexicons and trimmings of fashion, as it applies to the Self and the garments that clothe the Self, and self-obliteration. Minnis addresses the inner needs of the poet―“the purpose of poetry is to seem as lifelike as possible so that you actually exist.”

Zirconia ...................... Bad Bad

Poetry

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