26 January 2013
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Eric Pankey, Dismantling the Angel

2012 New Measure Poetry Prize Winner
Selected by Jon Thompson

Dismantling the Angel, Eric Pankey’s tenth volume of poetry, collects prose and hybrid poems written over the last two decades. At times god-ridden, the poems enact and subvert the form of the parable, the not-so-good news of the gospel. At times whimsical, the poems question the veracity and stability of the autobiographical I. Always speculative, the poems nag at the threadbare veil between the known and as of yet to-be-known. By turns brooding and bemused, the poet turns his attention to a past that recedes as quickly as it can be approached, to the examples and lessons of art, film, and poetry—Max Ernst, Alfred Hitchcock, and Li Ho—and to the ordinary mess we call today.