B.J. Best

The color, noise, and often cryptic images of classic video games set the prose poems in B.J. Best’s But Our Princess Is in Another Castle in motion, but the poems soar far beyond their nostalgic springboards. And while Mario, Pac-Man, and pioneer families forsaken on the Oregon Trail populate these pixelated landscapes, this book translates the games and plays them in the real world, so an Asteroid becomes just one more star shot with lost love, Space Invaders might have communist sympathies, and God is just as bad at Tetris as you are. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, the book’s levels explore how our past virtual lives can inform our present, actual ones. A coming-of-age narrative turned love story turned philosophical journey, But Our Princess Is in Another Castle deftly combine two mediums into vivid, smart poems as lyrical as they are imaginative.

Poetry. In STATE SONNETS, B.J. Best takes the venerable poetic form on a road trip, speeding down highways of romance, regret, longing, and sex on a tour that lustily wanders into a collection of fourteen-line postcards--pushpins that map the arcs and angles of love and travel.