Exhibit of Forking Paths

"Reminiscent of Russell Edson, Grinwis creates a series of nearly bewildering yet engaging microcosms. . . . Grinwis manages, throughout, to build poems that are fun, disjunctive, and seem improvisatory, while also sturdy . . . "--Publishers Weekly

"Grinwis's collection attempts to locate the perfect living image by experimenting with how, like an electrical circuit, a poem controls and utilizes energy and work. . . . Grinwis's poems end outside their circuitry in wonder, surprise, and non sequitir; their voltage is untenable. . . . By the end of this collection, Grinwis has beautifully interrogated ideas of both containment-- 'To be a valley inside walls. [ . . . ] A downpour caught / in a carton of flowers'--and motion--'What is seen in the motion / and what is felt.'"--The Iowa Review

"[Grinwis's] poems zing with surprise, with slantwise looks at the everyday that added up to something that read more like an image-drenched dream."--The Valley Advocate

"[Grinwis's] poems zing with surprise, with slantwise looks at the everyday that added up to something that read more like an image drenched dream."--The Valley Advocate"Words are squeezed into usage that had no right to be there--nouns, verbs, who cares what they once were? There is something illuminating at the core of this book, something bright and burning we can carry with us wherever we go." --James Tate

"In James Grinwis' Exhibit of Forking Paths, exuberance and restraint live side by side as the poet moves surface to interior and back again in a reconnaissance mission to find out what holds its identity at bay and what holds its identity inside itself like 'a bigger stone / inside the smaller one' or 'a cloud empty of another cloud.' By turns definition, transformation, hermeneutics, these poems make me revisit the scenes of my worlds, doubled and forked." --Eleni Sikelianos, National Poetry Series Judge

"James Grinwis is a poet of felt imagination and originality. His poems wander happily through landscapes and locations that at first appear slightly abstract, and then find resolve in exciting particularities of language--language that is continually sensitive to origins, images, and inviting juxtapositions. An exciting and utterly remarkable book."--Michael Burkard