16/30: Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, 30 Poets in Their 30s.

I'm currently enrolled in a low-residency MFA program, and because of its solitary nature, I don't get to see much of my peers' work. My program also trends a bit older, so several of the writers I'd recommend aren't elligible for this list. But I do want to highlight one who meets the criteria.

From what I've read, Jen Sperry Steinorth's work falls into two major types. Roughly half the poems she makes are small, clean and composed. The other half are wild and sprawling – and these are the poems that most fascinate me. I love Jen's daring. She takes big risks with form and association, flaunting her imagination. It's not easy to make a poem like this fly, but Jen's energetic philosophy and quirky humor make me want to read these strange, lovely works again and again. I'm excited to see how she continues to explore in years to come, and you should be, too.

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Jennifer Sperry Steinorth is a builder and designer in northern lower Michigan. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Tar River, The Louisville Review, A River and Sound Review, The Southeast Review Online, Wake: Great Lakes Thought and Culture and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Forking the Swift, was published in 2010 by Michigan Writers Cooperative Press. She is a student in the MFA program at Warren Wilson.

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