Jeff Baker

Whoop and Shush Jeff Baker

Marc Notes: 'Whoop & Shush' is a book of poems obsessed with the ways we are bound, and bound together, by our language. Whether these poems are re-envisioning a childhood in the Appalachians of East Tennessee, calling out to Cherokee ancestors who no longer populate a lost homeland, or are giving new voice to a range of characters in surprising ways (Shakespeare's Caliban show's up at the US Navy's nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll and a deceased Elvis speaks from the afterlife), the central obsession with how language can strike notes both high and low remains. Commendation Quotes: Under the spell of the language and its restless repetitions and rhythms, these poems surprise with unexpected turns and shifts, associations and speculations. Jeff Baker reminds us that it is words that beget the whoop and shush of worlds, and sing us back into the strangeness of being. Biographical Note: Jeff Baker grew up on small farm in a place called Smokey Branch in the mountains of East Tennessee. He has earned degrees from Tennessee Tech and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. To pay his way through school, he worked in all the following sorts of factories: windshield, airplane seat, boat seat, refrigeration compressor, air bag, steering column, meat processing, mushroom, chocolate, and toothbrush. His poems have been published widely and have been anthologized in "Best New Poets 2010" and "The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee."