The Search Engine

The poetry of nerves, of which the best exponents are Berryman, Plath, and even to some degree but more mutedly because of her exterior cool, Elizabeth Bishop, is self-evidently, truly American, and this poet is a fine recorder of its devastating little complexities... The eye is restless and relentless, a detail-devourer, a silent machine that has developed, like a diary, a hunger for subtleties... At her acutest she is irresistible. 

—Derek Walcott, from the Introduction 

An outstanding debut—zesty, strange, funny, moving. First book to wholly change the way I think about poetry in several years. 

—Roddy Lumsden 

Ossip produces poem after poem that showcase a robust energy and freneticism; what’s all the more impressive is, that for all of their sheer ravenousness and ranginess, the poems that populate this book are incredibly pressurized and precise...She makes poetry that enhances our perceptual ability by producing honed moments of apprehension. The word that occurs to me is virtuoso...We are with the speaker and we recognize the speaker’s world as our own, even if we blush a little for not having noticed it this fearfully and lovingly before. We are the richer for The Search Engine, a wonderful first book from a promising, powerful new poet. 

—Marc McKee, Gulf Coast