The sapient roaches of our planetary future, when they seek to understand the sickening dismay, abysmal grief and goofy absurdity of the Anthropocene in Donald Trump’s America, will reach for their dog-eared (or bug-horned) copies of Aaron Anstett’s Please State the Nature of Your Emergency. In these impossibly crystalline poems, Anstett has distilled from the ironic bile of our vast, unbearable tragedy the steely essence of our predicament.
Aaron Anstett’s previous collections are Insofar as Heretofore, Each Place the Body’s, No Accident, and Sustenance. Among other honors, his work has received the Nebraska Book Award, the Backwaters Prize, and the Balcones Poetry Prize, and he has served as a regional poet laureate, instituting a continuing program that places the work of local writers in waiting areas. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Lesley, and children.