Soft Focus

Book excerpt: Poetry. Women's Studies. Light is louche and love is not a natural beauty in Sarah Jean Grimm's disarming and ethereal debut collection of poetry. SOFT FOCUS glares at subjects like internet culture, bodies, beauty products, and American exceptionalism, laying their contents bare. Grimm's poems lift the veil of femininity and the result is brilliant and raw. A true journey through the psychic landscape of today's fixations and phobias. "The speaker of the poems in SOFT FOCUS admires then recoils, looks at you then looks away, flickers on then off--all in an effort to understand and harness her own power. Sometimes that power comes from her body, sometimes it comes from performance, and sometimes it comes simply from defining what she wants, even when it's unattainable. I love the lens Sarah Jean Grimm sees her world through."--Chelsea Hodson