Thomas Lux selected this debut collection as winner of BOA's A. Poulin, Jr., Poetry Prize. In his foreword he writes, "I was immediately struck by the boldness of imagination, the strange cadences, and wild music of these poems. We should be glad that young poets like Keetje Kuipers are making their voices heard not by tearing up the old language but by making the old language new."

Keetje Kuipers, a native of the Northwest, earned her BA at Swarthmore College and MFA at the University of Oregon. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she divides her time between Stanford...

The Keys to the Jail asks the question of who is to blame for all we've lost, calling us to reexamine the harsh words of failed love, the aging of a once-beautiful body, even our own voracious desires. Keetje Kuipers is a poet of daring leaps and unflinching observations, whose richly textured lyrics travel from Montana's great wildernesses to the ocean-fogged streets of San Francisco as they search out the heart that's lost its way.

Dolores Park

In the flattening California dusk,
women gather under palms with their bags

of bottles and cans. The grass...