Animals of Habit by Catherine Pierce Wick Poetry Chapbook Series Three, #7 2004, 40 pp ISBN 0-87338-805-4 Paper, $6.00 courtesy of our partner, Atlas Books Call (419) 281-1802 to order by phone.

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“In ‘Love Poem to the Phrase Let’s Get Coffee,’ Catherine Pierce writes ‘I adore / your elegant manner, / one hand on the car door, / the other on the ass.’ She writes with her own tricky elegance, one that acknowledges yet adores language’s self-serving grace. Pierce deftly blends repetition with sophisti-cated syntax, and a sinister wit glows inside the emotional wisdom of her vision. Animals of Habit is an exhilarating book.”—Andrew Hudgins

“If I didn’t know the poet personally, I’d think the name Catherine Pierce was a pseudonym, for these poems are not merely edgy, they are razor-sharp—they disembowel. What an extraordinary command of structure, persona, and humor this poet has! In one fell swoop, she has re-invented the ‘love’ poem and eschewed both pretentiousness and the anti-intellectual by being always smart and entertaining.”—Kathy Fagan

Catherine Pierce attends the University of Missouri, Columbia, where she holds a creative writing fellowship and is a Ph.D. candidate. Her poems are being published in Mid-American Review, descant, and Willow Springs.

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