Elaine Equi's narrow lines are like the rungs of a ladder that one ascends while one is descending them. It's a motion like that in Wang Wei's lines, Stars / float up / toward dawn, ' which she quotes in her cento, Wang Wei's Moon.' Or, as she beautifully puts it, Discreetly a breeze enters the room.'-John Ashbery Ripple Effect showcases thirty years of Elaine Equi's investigations into our cultural obsessions. Vivid, savvy, and accessible, her poems can transform almost anything-a list, a diary entry, advertising speak-into sophisticated, germane elixirs of pop culture and high art. Widely published, these poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and numerous volumes of The Best American Poetry.
Equi's succinct, witty, and innovative work has been widely published, appearing in the The New Yorker, Norton's Postmodern American Poetry, and four recent volumes of The Best American Poetry. A central figure in Chicago's poetics scene during the 70s and 80s, she now lives in New York where she teaches at City College, New School and NYU.