Ascent of the Mothers

These poems catalyze the reader to take pause and contemplate the sorrow and wonder of being human.
Publishers Weekly

Kocot’s is a quintessential poetry of ambivalence, a quality absent from less-nuanced poetry that revels in strong opinions—when more often, in life, we don’t quite know how to take things, “staying up nights” “For no particular reason”...Kocot powerfully reminds us that that experience is riddled with the ordinary, the arbitrary, the anarchic, and the absurd, and that to value it we must acknowledge this or fail in our understanding.
Angela Ball, Best American Poetry

Noelle Kocot is the author of many collections of poetry, including God's Green Earth (2020), Phantom Pains of Madness (2016), Soul in Space (2013), The Bigger World (2011), and a book of translations of some of the poems of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default (2011), all from Wave Books. Their previous works include the discography Damon's Room, (Wave Books Pamphlet Series, 2010), Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books 2009) and Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books 2006). They are also the author of 4 (2001) and The Raving Fortune (2004) (both from Four Way Books). Their poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry in 2001, 2012, and 2013. They are the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, The Fund for Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and a residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Kocot has taught at the University of Texas New Writers' Project and currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the New School. They are the Poet Laureate of Pemberton Borough, New Jersey.