Though Jennifer L. Knox writes with a chaotic and preternaturally inventive élan of a disgusting world untethered from the spirit, lost and locked in its own matrix of collective narcissistic excitement, she refuses not to love it. She writes of little durable people and little durable dogs, all with wide, durable spirits. What you get is the embarrassing truth that is our world—and Knox looking at it and us for what we are: a clutter of gorgeous, lovable kitsch. And she does so with what can only be called satiric empathy. In fact, she is without doubt one of the most empathic writers of recent decades. In short, she’s a freakin genius. —Gabriel Gudding


Jennifer L. Knox’s first book A Gringo Like Me is a rarity in that it is almost as good as the blurbs on its back say it is, and her second book is even better. Knox is a tragic poet, though her poems at times seem comic. Very USA in other words. Filled with the despair of our “fallen names” finding poignant resolutions where none exist. The characters in Drunk by Noon are sad spasms desperate for the entertainment promised by the photographs of empty American landscapes, and finding it after all only in each other. For which Knox has the heart to forgive them. Knox has a sympathetic eye for the caricatures and celebrations we USAers use to evade the cultural horror she depicts with complicity as if she too were not entirely innocent of it. Her poems typify and experience our angst hypes, our hopeless flippancies. She braves to save whom, herself or us? —Bill Knot


Since Knox favors premise over conclusion, her poems simply speak—they do not explain. In this way they are not entirely unlike scripture. The part that is unlike scripture is the one that’s like “Wait, I was reading these poems and laughing but my hearing aid fell out and then my face just kind of blew off in a beautiful rainbow spray of bullshit-dissolving napalm.” —Sarah Manguso