Questions from Outer Space by Diane Thiel '88, '90 MFA (Red Hen Press)
Thiel's third full-length poetry collection, and her twelfth book, arrives bristling with navigable strangeness and open-ended questions. The 67 sometimes otherworldly poems here weave through biology, parenting, the pandemic, world travel, life on Zoom, growing up in the South, the multiverse, and the fate of the earth, among other subjects. The poems appear in a range of forms, some formal and some not, and with a range of perspectives, from aliens looking at the earth and trying to discern what's going on to children asking the very large questions, like "When is the end?/Is the end a holiday?" Thiel is a University of New Mexico professor who teaches creative writing.

By Edward Hardy, January 19th, 2023