Jules Nyquist's accessible, clever poems in Appetites, blend so much you wouldn't think of together, together: tulips and knives, hunger and kisses-- each subject is made new in its unique juxtaposition. The poems are understated, the titles intriguing, pulling you to read them: Glenda and the Egg, McDonald's 1972, Pop-Tarts and Asti. When she is Beautiful, it Doesn't Count as Kissing, Sugar: A History, Sex in Church, Your Penis has a Tongue, Ode to Erica Jong. Something for all appetites. And photographs and recipes for many things too.
Lyn Lifshin, author of All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Ballroom and the subject of the award-winning documentary film, Not Made of Glass.
The title is apt: Jules Nyquist's poems have a great appetite, a love for the delicious, the tactile, the funky and the true. This collection, organized around mealtimes, brims with inventive enthusiasm not only for every lover sent our way but for favorite poets, favorite recipes, and for the exhilaration of life's changes and travel. And the poems have perks: intriguing photographs that range from the handle of an old refrigerator in an Airstream trailer to the painted words "Cherry Bomb" on a parked car, not to mention the book's marvelous epigraphs on food, illustrating Virginia Wolfe's observation: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
Star Black, author of Double Time