SUNNYLYN THIBODEAUX : THE WORLD EXACTLY

  Poems moving as music, first thought the first chord, playing with trust to a notion of free improvisation, rhythm guiding the tongue to an ending fade. Each page seems as if news from a day, a report made magic by poetry's promise, a devotion—in love with a world thought safe, yet entirely askew. Sunnylyn's voice is on the radio, some mystic Southern station, and it sounds beautiful. — Thurston Moore How can there be pleasure amid personal and societal dread? How can there be such beauty when one must constantly “survive/ another night in this body, mind/ racing with its tickertape?” Sunnylyn Thibodeaux’s poetry knows that this intermixture, in its idiosyncratic detail, its weather, temperament, tragedy, is the one thing there is. “The things we know/ know us first.” So there’s a surprising amount of radiance and pleasure; San Francisco is real; the family is individuals; politics just there. You go on, shaky and graceful (full of grace). — Alice Notley Sunnylyn Thibodeaux’s poem