The Desense of Nonfense by Megan A. Volpert

If I didn’t write a blurb for Megan Volpert’s book, she would probably write a poem about that fact, which would be o.k. — because her stuff is actually quite sharp and amusing.

Richard Foreman

Megan Volpert excavates the heart of non-fence with a surgeon’s scalpel and a poet’s umbrella on an operating table. Equal parts whimsy, collision, and erudition, this is an amazing pop linguistics addition to the literature of the de-sensive.

Daphne Gottlieb

Not since the Nature Theater of Oklahoma has such a cast of characters been recruited in the name of narrative theory and good clean fun.   Starring icons of culture high and low, from Slavoj Zizek to Simon Cowell, from Akira Kurosawa to Will Ferrell, Volpert’s essay on nonsense is a Technicolor triumph.

Jena Osman

Just when you thought confessional poetry had collapsed in a dank crypt, driven there in white Volvos by secretly sybaritic academics (those brave souls dwelling on the abyss of their sensitivity) who have written some of the very best poems about the immense difficulties of doing simple things, like buying fresh asparagus and artichokes or taking out the trash on a moonlit night while the neighbor’s unmanageable dog is peering at you, along comes Megan Volpert, a rascal who managed to escape from a genie’s bottle and doesn’t want our sympathy. Her poetry is impolite, mocking, razor sharp, tough as a saint’s sandals, funny, unexpected, and refreshing.   I admire the poet who put “acanthus glaucopareius” and a “thousand drooling debutantes” in the same line.

John Yau

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Megan A. Volpert is a performance poet from Chicago who has settled in Atlanta with her partner, Mindy. Volpert holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University, and currently teaches High School English.

the desense of nonfense is her second full-length book of poems. She published two collections in 2007: face blindness with BlazeVOX Books and domestic transmission, a chapbook with MetroMania Press.

This self-proclaimed love child of Joan Jett and Tina Fey has shared microphones with a wide range of poets: from Christian Bök, Andrei Codrescu, and Alice Notley, to Laura Mullen, Collin Kelley and Buddy Wakefield. Volpert has been in competition at the National Poetry Slam, and is a board member of Poetry Atlanta Inc.

Rooted in confessionalism and surrealism, her work has a strong interest in the performative and is also influenced by second-generation New York School poetry. Volpert still does not own a copy of the MLA Handbook, but no longer counts glitter among her hobbies.

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