"Ways that may have been impossible to fold, in successfully folding here, grow from impossibility to possibility. Every idea in this book is a fold understanding how to increase area and flexibility within apparent confines (as in pop-up books). As scale shifts, large and small scale blossoming, the heart, the pulse—moments fold and unfold in a dance of patterns in which we and everything that exists participate, as impossible as that can seem. Consider how some folded material retains obvious memory of having been folded: creases, pleats—perhaps even when evidence is far more subtle, some evidence of having been folded imprints what has come together, every word marking mechanisms of encounter."—Thylias Moss

"In his debut collection, In Ways Impossible to Fold, Michael Rerick, winner of The Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize for 2008, presents poems that have a clear sense of having been made. His compassionate, insistent voice, matched by an inventive project, creates a circuitry that can bear witness to objects, mixed media, people, cities, foodstuffs, and language. As an amateur sculptor (a distinction mentioned in the author’s note) Rerick grapples with the sculptural predicament as a mode of ekphrasis, but more importantly, he uses this knowledge as a way to approach the world, call it a cubist epistemology that contains travel, literature, family, art.

"In ways impossible to scold, this collection culls the dreams and the day’s residues. Whether in a circle, or a sphere, or with disembodied “boob,” with aplomb (no, always with aplomb)—these poems display the traces of their own making and Rerick can stand proudly beside them, or point from across the room as the film crews and the critics step into the hallway for drinks."— Joshua Butts, Octopus Magazine

The ceaseless deformations [of these poems] hover between organic and mannerist topologies. These terrific and brave poems entrust themselves to that wager. And you can too.—Tenney Nathanson

ISBN-13: 978-0-9792416-8-0 $15.00