Graham Foust would probably not tell you he is trying to break new ground with the style of poetry in his award-winning collection, Leave the Room to Itself. However, the introduction by Joe Wenderoth, the judge who selected Foust's collection for the 2003 Sawtooth Prize in Poetry, notes that he distrusts poets who write imitative of particular "schools" of poetry, and that "poems written in a school are not usually poems at all, but learned imitations of poems gone by." Wenderoth notes his attraction to Foust's poems arises from the poet's thriving in the "unshelteredness" of American life, and thus his not aligning with one school or another.
Foust does not write long, confessional narratives in the manner of much contemporary poetry. In fact, it's rare to see a collection of such spare (and short) poems win competitions. It's therefore laudable for Ahsahta Press to ensure the availability o fa diversity of poetic voice.
Foust's poems evoke not only the Iowa landscape in which he lives, but many poems also feature an urban sensibility. There's a lot of grit to be found in these poems, where empty rooms take on a great foreboding, as in these lines from the poem, "Politics":
Leave the room
to itself. Compare it
to a sleeping,
living creature.
Time is the dark-
packed house
of this place,
the luck of the desert
cut
into the floor of the desert.
While I wouldn't call Foust a "language poet," his love of how language can be used is obvious. Words grind against each other, or flow languidly as alternative realities. For example, this excerpt from "Disappearingly":
Frozen in a photograph, hands guide
and interfere
and so memoryat once
our lie
and our promise
is given to this evening.
A rain re-erupts.
If you find yourself searching for a unique voice in contemporary poetry, I highly recommend Foust's collection. Wry, witty, and enjoyable: it will not disappoint.
