Star Things, Paperback/Jess Parker

In her contest-winning poetry collection, Star Things , Jess Parker pulls down the cosmos as if a blanket, hangs the firmament itself as if a string of festive lights to illuminate the magic in the worldly mundane. These sixty-one brief yet powerful poems work in a broad array of forms, at once playful and serious, taking risks, toying with readers' expectations and delivering seemingly effortless coups de grâce with a sly wink. Said Josh Norman ( Telescopes and Other People ), one of our final judges: "Every love, every scraped knee, every abandonment, every moon is at once familiar yet alien." Cynthia Marie Hoffman ( Call Me When You Want to Talk About the Tombstones ) reckoned that "if the stars' reflection in a pond creates a 'morse code' that communications with the constellations, so do these poems transmit the intricacies of being human in orbit among the stars...holding close to the knowledge that 'we were moondust and will be again.'"