Brianna Noll

The Era of Discontent Brianna Noll

Poetry. THE ERA OF DISCONTENT by Brianna Noll was chosen by Jane Satterfield as the winner of the 2020 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award. Christina Pugh had this to say about it: THE ERA OF DISCONTENT, Brianna Noll's brilliant second book of poems, invites us into a wondrous geography that commingles the human senses with the works of science, mythology, art history, and philosophy. Prescient yet unassuming--and armed with a powerful sense of the poetic line--Noll is a trustworthy guide to this gorgeous universe that is utterly her own but also in concert with the hidden rivulets of the world we think we know. Never content with undifferentiated swaths of sight or sound, she is driven to see and to hear more--revealing the intellectual capacities of gradation and striation in every image or sound, from lanterns to robots. As a result, her range is synesthetically rich and supple, rendering 'the making of galaxies' inextricable from 'the half-life of a rose.' These are truly breathtaking poems.