BLACK APERTURE by Matt Rasmussen

As a member of the Academy of American Poets, I received a copy of Black Aperture, winner of the Academy's Walt Whitman Award for poets' first books. I did not intend to read the book in three sittings, wanting to give each poem space, but the overarching subject—the poet's brother's suicide—is darkly absorbing.

The poems are tightly written, yet figurative and purposeful; the book an example of where poetry, crime, and noir can meet.

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